Download FS_GIA_Mark Guthridge_final

National Research Program
Grant-in-aid
Chief investigator: Dr Mark Guthridge
Institute:
Australian Centre for Blood Diseases/Monash
University
Project title:
New approaches to targeting the survival of
AML cells
Disease focus:
Acute myeloid leukaemia
Funding:
$99,736
Funding period:
2011
Project summary
Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) only responds well to treatment in the short
term. The majority of patients relapse due to the ability of the progenitor (or
‘mother’) AML cells to survive both chemotherapy and the newer targeted
treatments.
Dr Mark Guthridge said his research team had preliminary evidence for an
“entirely new mechanism by which AML progenitor cells may evade conventional
as well as new generation drugs”.
“We’re tackling an important and critical issue that underpins the short-term
transient responses of AML to current therapies,” Dr Guthridge said.
“In more than 85% of our AML samples we found a specific cell survival pathway
had been activated,” he said.
“We believe the family of enzymes called Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, or PI3K,
may play a previously unsuspected role in activating this cell survival pathway in
leukaemia cells and increasing the likelihood of relapse.
“If we can identify the specific enzyme responsible, it may provide new avenues
for selectively targeting AML progenitor cells and allow new opportunities for
blocking survival programs in leukaemia.”
P13K is known to be involved in a range of cancers and the enzyme family is
being targeted for drug development by pharmaceutical companies.