MELBOURNE, July 10: Australian scientists have said they have discovered a new drug that holds great promise for treating children with an aggressive form of leukaemia.
A Study was undertaken at University of New South Wales (UNSW) where 70 different drugs were tested over 10 years .
Around 150 Australian children are said to be diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common childhood cancer and 15 per cent would have an aggressive subtype of ‘ALL’ known as ‘T-ALL’, that is generally less responsive to therapy and more likely to relapse.
UNSW Conjoint Richard Lock and Donya Moradi Manesh, based at the Children’s Cancer Institute, have shown that a drug known as PR-1042 is effective against laboratory models of aggressive T-ALL.
Their findings have been published in the prestigious journal Blood.
The research team tested PR-104 through the Pediatric Preclinical Testing Program, a consortium funded by the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), to prioritise and fast track new drugs into clinical trials in children with aggressive cancers.
“During the 10 years we’ve been funded under the NCI program, we’ve tested over 70 drugs and combinations, and PR-104 is one of the most exciting yet, with the potential to be fast-tracked into clinical trials for children,” said Lock.
“We were so encouraged by our first results with PR-104 that we undertook additional studies which showed the drug to be preferentially active against T-ALL, a subtype of ALL affecting white blood cells known as ‘T cells’.
“We believe that PR-104 might be an effective drug for patients who have initially benefited from conventional treatment for T-ALL, but who have subsequently relapsed.”
At first baffled by why T-ALL responded to PR-104, the researchers realised that only the T cell subtype expressed high levels of AKR1C3, an enzyme that activates PR-104.
The research team is in the process of examining the molecular biology behind AKR1C3, and trying to understand why T-ALL cells express very high levels of the enzyme. (PTI)
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