Assessing genetic variants aids leukaemia study

A consortium undertaking the largest ever genomic study of relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common malignant disease of childhood, has channelled part of its EUFP7 grant funding into identification of genetic factors underlying resistance to treatment.

Population Genetics is to carry out multi-year analysis on DNA samples collected by the 23 research teams of the IntReALL consortium from children across Europe, Japan, Israel and Australia who have relapsed after treatment for ALL. The company will apply its GenomePooling™ workflows to identify and validate associations between genetic risk factors and treatment efficacy.

Goals of the study, led by Vaskar Saha, Professor of Paediatric Oncology at The University of Manchester, are to understand which patients are suited for reduced toxicity treatments and also to provide a genetically stratified basis for randomised controlled studies of potential new treatment agents.

ALL affects 4 per 100,000 children per year in Europe but intensive combination chemotherapy with stem cell transplantation has improved survival from under 20% in the 1970s to over 80% today. However treatment is complex and prolonged and it is not understood why some children do not respond.

“This study presents a unique but highly complex opportunity to interrogate a large dataset of this malignant disease. Population Genetics has shown its expertise in the field of large population gene association studies which would probably otherwise be too costly and error-prone for clinical researchers seeking to test hypotheses,” said Professor Saha.