|  |  |  | | | | LEEDS LEUKAEMIA RESEARCHER WINS PRESTIGIOUS US AWARD | | | | |
| |  Dr Jim Allan, a Leukaemia Research scientist from the University of Leeds.
Release Date: 8th July 2003
A cancer scientist from Leeds travels to the US later this week to give a keynote presentation after winning a prestigious award for his pioneering research.
Dr Jim Allan, a Leukaemia Research scientist from the University of Leeds, who has also studied at Harvard University in the US, is honoured by the American Association for Cancer Research Molecular Epidemiology Group for his excellent research.
He will present his findings to an audience of the world's leading cancer scientists and doctors at the AACR meeting in Washington DC from the 10th-14th July.
The 33 year-old, who lives in York, has been studying why some cancer patients develop leukaemia months or even years after receiving certain types of treatment.
He has been searching for the genetic changes that cause patients to develop what is known as secondary leukaemia, and to identify why some people are more prone to this than others.
With Leukaemia Research funding, Dr Allan has analysed patients with a type of blood cancer known as Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is diagnosed in nearly 1,400 people in the UK each year.
Up to 5% of these patients develop secondary - or therapy-related - leukaemia.
Hodgkin's lymphoma is commonly treated with anti-cancer drugs called methylating agents - and it is these powerful drugs that in some people can lead to another cancer.
Dr Allan explained: "We have found that Hodgkin's lymphoma patients with a specific version of a gene called hMLH1 are ten times as likely to develop leukaemia than people without this version of the gene, if they are treated with this type of chemotherapy."
The research is an important milestone in the development of treatment directed at the specific needs of individual patients and will help in the overall effort to understand the causes of leukaemia.
"This information helps us build a picture of individual patients and how they are likely to respond to treatment. Those Hodgkin's lymphoma patients with this particular gene might clearly benefit from the use of different types of chemotherapy. We should also consider more closely monitoring them once their treatment is over - so that we can identify any problems earlier and do something about them."
Further work will reveal whether patients with other forms of cancer are at a higher risk of treatment-related leukaemia in this way.
Leukaemia Research Scientific Director Dr David Grant welcomed the new findings. "Secondary leukaemias are particularly distressing for patients - especially if they have been caused by the treatment that has effectively cured them of their lymphoma. One of our goals is to learn to improve treatment while reducing side effects and these findings are clearly a good step in that direction."
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