New effective combination therapy for pediatric T-acute leukemia

Medical Xpress / Tampere University / Blood ^ | June 20, 2022 | Saara Laukkanen et al

[ConservativeMind]

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer affecting children. The T-ALL form of leukemia that emerges from early T lineage cells has a poorer prognosis than B-lineage ALL. The prognosis for relapsed T-ALL is very poor and new therapies are sorely needed. A joint study discovered a new combination of drugs that is effective against T-ALL.

The finding is based on a previous discovery made by the Tampere University research group where the general tyrosine kinase inhibitor dasatinib was found to be effective in approximately one third of the tested patient samples.

In the treatment of leukemia, the efficacy of a single drug is usually lost quickly, so the new study searched for drug combinations that would have an enhanced synergistic effect with dasatinib. This was the case with temsirolimus, a drug that inhibits a parallel signaling pathway. The combination of the two drugs was more effective in eradicating leukemia cells in zebrafish and human disease than using a single drug.

"During this study, we developed a new drug screening method for the rapid assessment of drug responses in zebrafish leukemia samples. In this screen, an effective drug combination was found, which was later confirmed by several cell line models, patient samples and human leukemias grown in mice," says Ph.D. Saara Laukkanen, the first author.

"This has been a long project, taking four to five years, and as a result, we now understand the mechanism of action of these drugs at molecular level in T-ALL," Laukkanen adds.

During the project, she spent six months as Visiting Researcher in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with Professor David Langenau's research group, with whom the project was carried out. She worked extensively with Ph.D. Alexandra Veloso, a research fellow.

[ConservativeMind]

The combination that worked was dasatinib and temsirolimus, two commonly available drugs.

The study isn’t available, but the abstract makes this sound pretty promising.

[ConservativeMind]

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