Professor Amrolia’s research project

Professor Persis Amrolia is a specialist in bone marrow transplantation who works at the Institute of Child Health in London. We told you a little about Professor Amrolia’s work in our letter, but here is some more information for those of you who wish to learn more about his work.

Professor Amrolia and his team are experts in treating childhood leukaemia. As he says “When a child is first diagnosed, we immediately start an aggressive chemotherapy regime to try and kill the leukaemic cells. For some children this is enough. Others do not respond as we would wish, and have to undergo the painful and risky procedure of a bone marrow transplant; currently this is our last resort.

Sadly for some children even this will not work; some leukaemic cells remain, they multiply once more and the child will relapse. When this happens after a transplant there is nothing more we can do and the child will die. The problem is that in some children the leukaemic cells become resistant to the chemotherapy drugs, so we need to find another way to kill them off.

We know that in other cancers immune cells taken from the bone marrow donor have cured patients who have relapsed. Sadly this has not been possible in the most common form of childhood leukaemia. However, by using this principle, we think we have found a way to eliminate these stubborn, remaining leukaemic cells.

We have used the latest scientific techniques to “re-programme” donor immune cells so that they seek out and recognise a molecule that is found on leukaemic cells (called CD19). These re-programmed cells are then infused into the child, where they literally search the child’s system for the leukaemic cells, latch on to them and destroy them. What is key to this process is that minimal damage is caused to the child’s body – by this stage the child will be extremely weak - so treatment must be very targeted so as not to cause more harm than good.

We’ve come a long way in this process; we have been able to show success in our laboratory – now we are desperate to get this technique on to the hospital wards to give hope to the children who have run out of treatment options.”

Professor Amrolia’s team is at the cutting edge of leukaemia research. The programme is a world-first – it will be the first time that this type of therapy will be used to treat children with leukaemia. The most important point to remember is that this work offers hope to children who currently have none.