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| Edited By: |Source: ANI |Updated: Apr 13, 2018, 03:14 AM IST
Scientists have announced a breakthrough discovery in understanding how the body fights leukaemia.
They have identified a protein called CD19-ligand (CD19-L) located on the surface of certain white blood cells that facilitates the recognition and destruction of leukaemiacells by the immune system.
This work represents the first report of a bioengineered version of CD19-L, a recombinant human biotherapeutic agent, targetting CD19-positive leukaemic stem cells.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Children's Centre for Cancer and Blood Diseases and The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is the most common cancer occurring in children and adolescents. Despite having received intensive chemotherapy, some patients have recurring disease. For these individuals, the prospect of long-term survival is poor.
Lymphocytes are a type of white blood cell involved in immune function and are categorised as either B-cells or T-cells.
This newly discovered element, CD19-L, is expressed on the surface of T-lymphocytes and allows them to selectively bind to the CD19 receptor on the surface of B-lineage leukaemia cells, and most importantly on leukaemic stem cells responsible for the survival and expansion of the leukaemia cell population.
Once the CD19-L binds to leukaemia cells, cell death occurs. Although CD19 is abundantly expressed on leukemia cells from B-lineage ALL patients, it is absent on red cells, T-cells, and normal bone marrow stem cells, making it specific, and therefore, a good therapeutic target.
Lead author Fatih Uckun and colleagues have bioengineered and prepared a highly purified liquid formulation of the human CD19-L protein.
This recombinant protein not only shows selective binding to leukaemia cells but also causes their rapid destruction within 24 hours. Perhaps most importantly, CD19-L killed even those leukaemia cells that were highly resistant to both standard chemotherapy drugs as well as radiation.
The identification of CD19-L may lead to therapeutic innovation for childhood leukaemia by allowing a selective destruction of leukeamic stem cells.
The study has been published in the British Journal of Haematology.
