Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

A STING operation to fight childhood leukaemia

A STING operation to fight childhood leukaemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the most common childhood cancer, affecting 3.3 per 100,000 children. It is a blood cancer arising from mutations in a patient’s T cells (T-ALL) or B cells (B-ALL). Children with T-ALL have a 5-10% lower chance of survival than B-ALL, with around 15% of patients succumbing to the disease. Development of ...

GOAL

$29,601

Australia > VIC > Metro
11/01/2024 > 31/10/2025

Field of Interest

  • Health/wellbeing and medical research

Target Population

  • People with a disability, illness or disease
  • Early years (0-5)
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

WEHI is where the world’s brightest minds collaborate and innovate to make life-changing scientific discoveries that help people live healthier for longer.

Established in 1915, WEHI is Australia's oldest medical research institute. Our medical researchers have been serving the community for more than 108 years, making transformative discoveries in cancers, infectious and immune diseases, developmental disorders and healthy ageing.

WEHI brings together diverse and creative people with different experience and expertise to solve some of the world’s most complex health problems. With partners across science, health, government, industry and philanthropy, we are committed to long-term discovery, collaboration and translation.

Project Summary

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the most common childhood cancer, affecting 3.3 per 100,000 children. It is a blood cancer arising from mutations in a patient’s T cells (T-ALL) or B cells (B-ALL). Children with T-ALL have a 5-10% lower chance of survival than B-ALL, with around 15% of patients succumbing to the disease.

Development of a new drug takes an average of 15 years to reach patients. However, drugs already approved for other conditions could be made available to patients in as little as 4-5 years if they can be proven to be effective, making research into new uses for existing drugs just as important as new drug discovery.

Researchers at WEHI have discovered that patients with another blood cancer, called Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), with certain mutations in their cancer relapse more quickly after treatment with current standard-of-care anti-cancer drugs known as BH3-mimetics. While investigating the cause of this therapy resistance, they found an alternative pathway that could be activated with drugs called STING agonists to kill cancer cells. Using a combination of the two drugs proved extremely effective at killing cancer cells from AML patients in preclinical studies and both drugs have been shown to be safe for patients.

The researchers believe this combination therapy could also work for T-ALL patients who do not respond to conventional treatments. This project involves testing the drug combination on patient samples to prove its effectiveness for T-ALL treatment.

Project Outcomes

Researchers in WEHI’s Blood Cells & Blood Cancer Division, led by Dr Sarah Diepstraten in the Kelly Laboratory, are collaborating with clinicians at the Royal Children’s Hospital to access samples from children with T-ALL, which they will test to see if they are responsive to this new combination therapy.

The researchers will first test multiple types of BH3-mimetic drugs in combination with STING agonist drugs on existing T-ALL cell lines to determine which drug combinations are the most effective at killing T-ALL cells.

The team will then use the most effective drug combinations on samples from patients with T-ALL. They will test these first in the lab and then by growing and treating them in preclinical laboratory models. This will provide the critical evidence needed to show that the drug combination is effective and should be tested in the clinic.

If T-ALL patient samples prove to be responsive to this drug combination, the team will work with clinical collaborators at the Royal Children’s Hospital to support the progress of this therapy into clinical trials.

Excitingly, WEHI’s previous results in AML and some other blood cancers suggest that this therapy is not only highly effective but can kill even the most aggressive types of blood cancers, even those that do not respond to other treatments. Obtaining similar results in T-ALL will provide hope to a whole new set of blood cancer patients and has real potential to improve outcomes for children with no other options.

Budget Breakdown

TOTAL BUDGET: $29,601
FUNDING
Funding source Amount
Funding gap (unconfirmed) $29,601
EXPENSES
Expense item Amount
Purchase of 6 T-ALL cell lines from certified cell banks, including shipping to Australia $5,520
Drugs for cell line/patient sample studies (BH3-mimetics and STING agonists) $3,000
Sterile consumables, media and cytokines for culture of cell lines and patient samples $10,000
Reagents for qPCR analysis $5,533
Reagents for western blot analysis $4,086
Flow cytometry analysis of cells (2 hr per week for 12 weeks) $1,464

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