PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Sep-2014

Contact: Luke Harrison l.harrison.1@bham.ac.uk University of Birmingham @unibirmingham

A key step in understanding the nature of the fight for superiority between mutated genes and normal genes could lead to new therapies to combat leukaemia, say researchers from the University of Birmingham and Newcastle University.

The study, published in Cell Reports, investigated Acute Myeloid Leukaemia to understand why leukemic cells are not able to develop normally into mature blood cells.

Stem cells in the bone marrow generate billions of different blood cells each day. The process resembles a production line with genes acting as regulators to control each step of the blood formation.

Leukaemia arises when the DNA encoding regulators in the stem cells is changed by a mutation. When a mutation occurs in the relevant regulator genes, the finely balanced order of the production line is disrupted with drastic consequences.

A chain reaction occurs, with the function of other regulators in the process being altered. The new cells no longer develop into normal blood cells, but leukemic cells that multiply and begin to take over the body.

Professor Constanze Bonifer, of the University of Birmingham, explained, "This particular leukaemia is characterised by a mutation in a gene that produces a rogue regulator. That is, one that is not normally made and behaves in a different way. The knock-on effect of that one mutation is huge."

The team showed that this aberrant regulator switches off hundreds of other genes, many of them regulators themselves, by using state of the art technology that looks at the activity of all genes within a cell. As a consequence of the drastically altered production line, normal blood formation cannot happen, and leukemic cells are formed.

Go here to see the original:
The war on leukemia: How the battle for cell production could be decisive