|  |  |  | | | | RESEARCH BRINGS HOPE FOR CHILDHOOD CANCER SUFFERERS | | | | |
| |  Dr Waseem Qasim
Release Date: 10th April 2006
London-based researchers are making steps forward to harness the power of stem cell transplants in children with leukaemia.
Childhood leukaemia remains the single largest cancer killer in children and when chemotherapy fails, stem cell transplants are the only suitable option left. However, this procedure leaves the worry for doctors that if the immune systems of the donor and the patient react against each other, then the transplant will fail.
Dr Waseem Qasim and his team based at the Institute of Child Health, London, are using the power of gene therapy to combat this problem known as ‘Graft versus Host Disease’ (GvHD).
Dr Qasim explains: “We now know a lot about how the immune system can be mobilised to attack leukaemia cells and this offers treatment possibilities that drugs and radiotherapy do not.
“T cells are part of the immune system and normally defend us against infections. We can use donor T cells to target leukaemia cells which after all are abnormal and need to be removed.”
The challenge has been to reduce or avoid causing GvHD in children who have a transplant whilst at the same time let the donor T cells kill the leukaemia cells. By engineering a ‘suicide gene’ in these T cells, researchers hope that if GvHD becomes a serious problem after a transplant, this gene can be switched on and the T cells will self-destruct.
“This technique could prove to be most beneficial if a well matched donor cannot be found for a child, because then we have to opt for one of the parents as a half matched donor,” says Dr Qasim. “This means there is high risk of GvHD and so if we are able to switch on this suicide gene we maybe able to save more lives.”
The use of suicide genes has already been successfully tested in adults and with Dr Qasim’s work now at an advanced stage, it is hoped that the approach will soon be tested in a clinical trial.
“This is a really promising step forward in research to combat a problem that sadly claims the lives of children treated for leukaemia,” says Dr David Grant, Scientific Director at Leukaemia Research.
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