Researchers have found a drug that can kill leukemia cells even from adults who have a poor prognosis because their leukemia has resisted existing treatments.
The drug, PBOX-15 can destroy cancerous cells of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) while sparing healthy cells, according to the researchers from Trinity College Dublin, in partnership with the University of Sienna, Italy.
The drug, which activates a procedure that causes cells to die, worked better than fludarabine, the medicine now used to treat CLL, in the cancerous cells from 55 patients. It also killed cells that had become resistant to chemotherapy, the researchers said.
CLL, a form of cancer in which the bone marrow makes too many white blood cells, is the second-most-common type of leukemia in adults. Around 10,000 people, usually over age 55, are diagnosed in the United States each year.
“We are still at an early stage,” professor Mark Lawler of Trinity College’s School of Medicine said in a statement. “We have to move it on to see if there are any side effects and bring it forward as a potential therapy for patients.”
Lawler believes it will take three to five years before the new drug will be available.
“But it’s very exciting,” he said. “We want to give hope to cancer patients.”
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