Blood Cancer Immunotherapy Research V1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating immunologic and molecular disease features to develop targeted therapies for blood cancers
IRAS ID
288329
Contact name
J Zabkiewicz
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Long-term survival remains poor in most patients with blood cancers, which are in fact incurable despite current treatments. Reasons for this include: 1)relapse(return of the disease after treatment)despite intensive chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation, 2)inability to deliver effective treatment because of side effects and poor tolerability (particularly in elderly patients who are the majority of cancer patients) and 3) lack of effective treatment. Moreover, blood cancers severely impair patient´s quality of life and put significant strain on NHS resources. Thus, there is a great ongoing need to improve therapy for these blood diseases.
Recent better understanding of why patient´s immune defences fail to control blood cancers have led to the development of targeted therapies which attack cancers more selectively and with fewer side effects. These therapies may harness the patient´s own immune system or exploit faulty signalling pathways that allow cancer cells to survive and grow. Increasingly, the same therapeutic approach can be applied to different types of blood cancers. Knowledge generated for one disease type may therefore be used to develop treatment for other types of blood cancer.
This project aims to improve and develop new targeted therapies for blood cancers by investigating how immune mechanisms and faulty signalling pathways can be used to more effectively attack malignant cells. We will focus on the most frequent types of blood cancers in adults and children, e.g. acute and chronic leukemias, myelodysplastic syndrome, lymphomas and multiple myeloma. This study will be directed towards both cancer cells and cells of the immune system in the tumour microenvironment. Data from our research will be linked to disease features including genetic abnormalities, immune cell activity and clinical observations including responsiveness to therapy.REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/SC/0315
Date of REC Opinion
9 Sep 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion