Srividya Swaminathan, PhD

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) are aggressive blood cancers of B- and T- immune cells. ALL is most common in children but also affects adults. 90% of childhood ALL is curable. However, 10% of children and ~60% adults with ALL are not cured. Aggressive forms of childhood and adult ALL produce abnormally high levels of the cancer-causing protein ‘MYC’ which has been particularly hard to inhibit in the clinic. To combat such hard-to-treat ALL, we will harness the body’s natural anti-cancer defense mechanism: a type of immune cell called a natural killer (NK) cell. Our earlier studies found that the MYC protein, produced by leukemia cells, suppresses the anti-cancer potential of NK cells in mice with ALL. We also found defective NK cells in children and adults with high-grade ALL. Those ALL patients who had fewer defective NK cells tended to survive longer and spend more of their lives free from disease compared to patients who had high levels of abnormal NK cells. As in mice, whether MYC reduces the anti-cancer potential of NK cells in children and adults with ALL is unknown. By addressing this question, our study will inform the development of NK cells as affordable therapies to cure difficult-to-treat ALL subtypes.