Detecting treatment-resistant cells in Leukaemia Patients

A2001722

Following treatment with some of the recent, very effective drugs used in the current large CLL clinical trial (FLAIR) a significant proportion of patients will eventually become resistant to the treatment and relapse. This is often the result of a mutation arising in genes for the drugs' target molecules. These mutations make the CLL cells with them more resistant to treatment, which allows these resistant cells to dominate the disease and to lead to treatment failure. This project aims to look for these mutations, in the STATIC CLL clinical trial, as early as possible using a range of sensitive molecular tests that  have been developed in the University of Leeds. Detecting these mutations as sensitively as possible is essential in order to be able to purify the CLL cells from the patients’ blood as, following treatment, these cells may be present as less than one in every ten thousand white blood cells. The Automacs cell sorter is a device which is designed to purify cells to which a magnetic antibody has been bound.

The purchase of a magnetic cell sorter will enable detection of treatment- resistant cells at an earlier stage than is currently possible. This will allow the team to explore the benefits of pausing treatment to prevent long-term treatment failure.

Lead Researcher	Dr Darren Newton
Host Organisation	Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Grant Amount	£35,649.00
Start Date	01/01/2022
Estimated Duration	5 years
Impact Areas	Health Inequalities - Cancer Care
Tags/key notes	Cancer and Neoplasms