Deprive leukemia cells of energy

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

Jérôme Tamburini is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Associate Professor at the Centre for Translational Research in Oncology and Hematology (CRTOH) at the University Faculty of Medicine, Associate Professor at the Swiss Cancer Center Lehmann (SCCL), and Professor at the University of Paris, where he is studying acute Energetic mechanisms of tumor cells in myeloid leukemia

In 2015, Jérôme Tamburini and his colleagues, together with the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) laboratory, were involved in the development of a pharmacological ingredient - GSK621 - which proved to be an excellent activator of AMPK in vitro

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

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