Introduction:

One in 50-100 people will develop leukaemia within their lifetime. Although cure rates are high for many types of leukaemia, there is no effective treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). Despite decades of research, no treatment is ultimately effective.

One cause of this is that, as they become treatment-resistant, these tumours relapse continually. The reason for this is that these leukaemias consist of extremely heterogeneous cells, some of which (called Leukaemia Stem Cells) are highly resistant to treatment. When treatment is administered, most cells are eliminated with the exception of these ones.

The project:

This project involves the launch of a ground-breaking strategy to study the behaviour and mechanisms of these leukaemia stem cells, cell by cell. Through this, we will be able to find out how to modify these cells, enabling us to treat them effectively and change the futures of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia patients.