Personalised yet NOT NICE treatment for leukaemia and lymphoma cancer cells

This project was selected in the framework of our European call: FIGHT KIDS CANCER 2022. It is jointly financed by Imagine for Margo, Kriibskrank Kanner Fondatioun and KickCancer.

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Leukaemia and lymphoma are the most common haematological malignancies in children and constitute almost half of all paediatric cancer cases. High-risk patients, who do not respond to standard therapy or suffer from relapse (when the disease comes back), only have a 27% survival rate.

The HEM-iSMART is a personalised medicine trial in which children with relapsed leukaemia or lymphoma will receive a treatment corresponding to the specific genetic alteration(s) present in their tumour. It aims at recruiting sixty patients in total.

Continuous research in cancer genetics and rapid development of new techniques to analyse tumour material have facilitated the development of drugs that specifically target mutations found in cancer cells.

When tumour cells are mutated, they produce mutated proteins that, in turn, promote cancer development and progression, and can lead to resistance of the tumour cells to standard treatment.

Targeted drugs could revert the activity of altered proteins, stop cancer growth or induce tumour cell death. As a result, such drugs could increase the chances of survival for children with relapsed leukaemia or lymphoma.

The HEM-iSMART trial aims at testing four new therapies, each one matching a specific genetic alteration present in the tumour of the patients. This new approach, the first to tackle this issue at a European level, will be carried out in collaboration with the International Leukaemia Target Board (ILTB).