New Investigator Research Grant Program

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of childhood cancer with more than 3000 children/adolescents under the age of 20 diagnosed with ALL each year in the United States. ALL is a disease that affects a type of white blood cells called lymphocytes that help the body fight infection and disease. ALL can be broadly divided into either B-ALL or T-ALL. B-ALL affects a type of lymphocytes called B-lymphocytes whereas T-ALL affect T lymphocytes. B-ALL also have better therapeutic options available including targeted and immunotherapies, whereas children with T-ALL are limited to therapies with well documented long-term negative effects like chemotherapy (using medicines to kill leukemic cells), radiation therapy (using high energy radiations to kill leukemic cells). T-ALL patients who do not respond to current treatments have uniformly poor overall survival. Currently there are no alternate treatments available for these patients. Hence, better therapies that kill leukemic cells without harming normal cells is the need of the hour in T-ALL. In this proposal, we aim to evaluate a new therapeutic target to treat T-ALL grounded on our preliminary finding that T-ALL cells are more sensitive to blocking the function of this protein than normal non-cancerous cells. This project will open up different avenues of using this approach in combination with currently used chemotherapy and with new drugs in T-ALL treatment