Latrophilins as Novel Biomarkers for Leukaemia Diagnostics. WO2016203031A1 2016

Leukaemia (blood/bone marrow cancer) affects over 250,000 people per year worldwide, with a potentially high mortality rate depending on the type of disease, age at onset and response to treatment–related toxicity. Since leukaemia affects a large number of children and elderly people, this discovery is crucially important for public health. High mortality rates can be, in part, ascribed to current treatments, which consist of aggressive chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation, and often do not result in effective remission of the disease. This is the result of a lack of understanding of the molecular mechanisms that allow malignant cells to escape host immune attack involving cytotoxic T lymphocytes and Natural Killer (NK) lymphoid cells. Our work led to a fundamental non-incremental breakthrough in understanding of the pathophysiology of leukaemia. We have recently discovered that acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) cells possess a unique biochemical pathway that allows these cells to escape the human body’s own anti-cancer immune defences. This pathological immunoprotective pathway does not exist in healthy blood cells, but develops as a result of malignant transformation. Importantly we discovered a novel biomarker of AML, which unlike other known biomarkers is expressed only in malignant and not in healthy cells.