A group of Scientists at the University of Birmingham have recently made an important medical breakthrough that could help fight a dangerous blood cancer called Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). This cancer often starts from another illness known as Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS).
The team, whose work was published in Nature Communications, used blood cells from a real MDS patient and converted them into stem cells in the laboratory. They used the cells to recreate how the disease becomes worse over time.
They found that a change in a gene called CEBPA was the main reason the cancer got more aggressive. When they introduced this gene mutation into the laboratory cells, the disease exhibited similar behaviour to what it did in the patient, even resisting chemotherapy. Dr Paloma Garcia, the lead scientist, stated that this new model will enable doctors to test new drugs more quickly and could lead to improved treatments or even the prevention of this deadly cancer in the future.
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