Dr Waseem Qasim, Institute of Child Health, London

01 December 2008

T-cell receptor therapy against leukaemia

Amount of grant: £210,301

Date of award: December 2008

This ground-breaking research aims to help children who are failed by existing treatments.

Dr Qasim and colleagues from both Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital in London are collaborating to develop a new technique for treating children who cannot be helped by current treatments.

In essence, they are developing a technique which they hope can be used to boost a child’s own immune response against leukaemia.

Background

A child’s immune system plays an important role in detecting and destroying leukaemia cells. But some children seem to lack the necessary immune cells to generate this response.

Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is a high-risk procedure which is used as a last resort in children who haven’t responded well to chemotherapy. The hope is that the donor’s immune cells will attack the leukaemia.

The research project

The research team want to enable the patient’s own immune cells to attack and kill the leukaemia cells; they will do this by transferring them into genes that control anti-leukaemic responses.

If the team are able to manipulate the patient’s immune cells in this way, the patient will be able to avoid the dangerous complications associated with bone marrow transplantation. The patient should have long-term protection against the leukaemia cells returning.

If laboratory testing is successful, the team could soon be trialling this technique on the hospital wards, to save the lives of children with the most difficult forms of leukaemia.

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