Leukaemia (blood cancer) is the most common type of childhood cancer. Treatment for Leukaemia has seen great progress over the years, and the number of children surviving for five years or more is now 90%. Sadly, there remains a stubborn number of leukaemia’s that don’t respond to typical treatment protocols or return after initial treatment success. For these patients there are limited treatment options and the toxic nature of them can cause life-altering health problems for those who survive.
Scientists believe that being able to test treatments before being administered to patients will increase survival and reduce the health problems caused.
In the University of Newcastle, researchers have developed a system in the lab that allows leukaemia samples to be grown outside the body as well as a a rapid imaging system, that allows complex combinations of medicines to be tested on patient samples.
The aim of this study is to find out how accurate this new system is at predicting how patients will respond to treatment in the clinic. By testing leukaemia samples with first-line chemotherapy and then comparing results to the response of the patients who gifted the original samples, researchers hope to be able to prove prove new methods of predicting drug efficacy in childhood leukaemia patients.
Grant Award – Pump Priming Grant 2021-2022
Funding Award – £10,000
Funding Awarded to – Dr Simon Bomken
Research Location – University of Newcastle
Lead Researcher – Dr Simon Bomken
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