New drug targets, kills leukemia cells in tissue samples

A multi-disciplinary team of European scientists has developed a new therapy that they say shows a remarkable ability in the lab to destroy the skeletons of leukemia cells. And it also appears to be effective in adults who have failed to respond to a standard therapeutic approach.

"We are still at an early stage," Trinity College Dublin Professor Mark Lawler told reporters. "Now we have to move it on to see if there are any side effects and bring it forward as a potential therapy for patients. But it's very exciting. We want to give hope to cancer patients."

The team heralded the success of PBOX-15, one of 75 compounds produced for the test. The team tested the drug on 55 tissue samples gathered from patients suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer that is quite common. And they were particularly impressed to see that the drug effectively targeted the leukemia cells without damaging blood and bone marrow cells. Lawler and his Trinity team worked with scientists at the University of Sienna and published their work on PBOX-15 in Cancer Research.

- read the article from the Irish Times
- here's the report from the BBC