Defeating leukemia cells by depriving them of energy

Acute myeloid leukemia affects blood and bone marrow cells and is a particularly dangerous type of cancer

Associate Professor Jerome Tamburini at the Medical and Translational Research Centre Onco-Haematology UNIGE Faculty of Medicine (CRTOH) and Swiss Cancer Centre Chef (SCCL) and Professor at the University of Paris is studying the energy mechanisms of tumor cells in acute myeloid leukemia

In 2015, Jérôme Tamburini and his colleagues at Inserm in Paris were involved in the development of GSK621, a pharmacological ingredient in the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) laboratory, which was shown to be an excellent activation of AMPK in vitro agent

Effective combination of two drugs

The first step, gene expression analysis of human tumor cells, identified an enzyme, PERK, that was particularly responsive to the presence of GSK621

The scientists then combined the two drugs in mice bearing human tumor cells and found that the combination was more effective at controlling tumor development than monotherapy

So what about leukemia stem cells?

Leukemia stem cells are present in a small group of cells within a tumor and can only be detected by their ability to spread the tumor again after the initial treatment has been successful

article title

AMPK-PERK axis represses oxidative metabolism and enhances apoptotic priming of mitochondria in acute myeloid leukemia