Scientists Find New Drug That Can Destroy Leukaemia Cells

People diagnosed with the most common form of leukaemia were given new hope yesterday after a team of Irish researchers announced a breakthrough in treatment of the disease.

A new drug is capable of killing leukaemia cells including those in patients who have a poor prognosis and have shown resistance to current therapies.

The discovery -- developed in a partnership between Trinity College Dublin and the University of Sienna in Italy -- showed the drug PBOX-15 is specifically active in cancerous cells and works by interfering with the structure or architecture of the cancer cell.

There are 114 new cases of the disease diagnosed here every year and it will take another three to four years before the treatment is developed by pharmaceutical companies and available for patients with the disease.

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL), a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow, is the most common leukaemia in the west and normally progresses more slowly than other forms of the disease.

Professor Mark Lawler, of the School of Medicine in Trinity and lead investigator, said the study showed that PBOX-15 "activates key targets in leukaemia cells that triggers the cells to die. Cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapy by evading or avoiding cell death. The TCD researchers demonstrated that PBOX-15 can overcome this resistance and kill these cancer cells."

The research, published in the renowned international journal 'Cancer Research', was conducted using CLL cells isolated from 55 CLL patients. PBOX-15 was more effective than the front-line therapy, fludarabine, in killing CLL cells.

"The most exciting result was that PBOX-15 also killed CLL cells that were resistant to the existing treatment. The ability of PBOX-15 to kill leukaemia cells while sparing normal blood cells suggests that the PBOX drug may pave the way for new approaches for the treatment of this incurable cancer," Prof Lawler added.

"Its activity in malignant cells isolated from patients with this common form of leukaemia emphasises the potential of this approach," said Dr Elizabeth Vandenberghe, a consultant haematologist at St James's Hospital who collaborated in the study.

Potential

John McCormack, chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, which donated €400,000 towards the research, said the findings emphasised the potential for basic science discoveries to translate to clinical benefit.

"These findings now need to be brought from the laboratory to the bedside so that they will ultimately benefit patients with this common form of leukaemia." Funding was also provided by Enterprise Ireland and the Higher Education Authorities Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI).