IRIC - Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer

Published on December 5, 2016

A study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation brings to light the recent advances made in the laboratory of Trang Hoang, Principal Investigator and Head of the Hematopoiesis and Leukemia research unit of IRIC.

This study examines T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), which represents 20% of all childhood leukemia diagnoses and is characterized by an accumulation of leukemic T-cells in the blood and bone marrow. T-cells are a type of white blood cells and a vital component of the immune system. Current chemotherapies efficiently reduce the leukemic burden; in the event of relapse, however, leukemia becomes harder to treat. This is attributable to the survival of preleukemic stems cells, which escaped chemotherapy and acted as reservoirs to produce new cancer cells.

This study shows two things: first, it supports the hypothesis that preleukemic cells are much less sensitive to the chemotherapy treatments used for T-ALL. Second, the team of Trang Hoang set up a new high-throughput screening procedure which recreates the cell’s microenvironment and identified chemical compounds that specifically target preleukemic stem cells without affecting the viability of healthy stem cells.

This represents a highly promising and innovating method. Since its release, this study has been quoted and commented in several medical journals:

• American Association for Cancer Research: A Microenvironment Screen Identifies Compounds Targeting pre-LSCs
• Medical Xpress: Screening drugs to kill cancer cells in their safe spaces
• Hematopiesis News
• Cancer Stem Cell News

This study was conducted by Bastien Gerby, project leader in the team of Trang Hoang. Additionally, it is the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration between several teams led by principal investigators at IRIC: Philippe Roux, Benjamin Kwok, Anne Marinier (also Director of the Medicinal Chemistry core facility) and Guy Sauvageau. Josée Hébert, Director of the Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, as well as Paul Maddox from the Biology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also collaborated on the project.