At last, infant leukaemia has weak spot

摘要

Hundreds of infants who die each year from an aggressive form ofleukaemiacouldonedaybe saved, thanks to the discovery of the disease's weak spot. Mixed-lineage leukaemia (MIX) accounts for 70 per cent of leukaemia in infants under two, half of whom will die within two years. Eric So of King's College London and colleagues have discovered a protein that both drives the development of MLL and makes it resistant to treatment. The guilty protein is beta-catenin, a transcription factor which activates other genes. In experiments on normal and MLL cells from mice and humans, the researchers demonstrated that beta-catenin is activated in cancer stem cells that prompt leukaemic blood cells to multiply.