Melbourne researchers have shown that leukemia can be successfully reversed by coaxing the cancer cells to convert back to normal.
Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have found that switching off a gene called Pax5 can cause a form of leukemia known as B-progenitor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer affecting children, but that switching it back on can effectively "cure" the disease,
Medical Express reports.
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"Along with other genetic changes, deactivating Pax5 drives normal blood cells to turn into leukemia cells, which has been shown before," said Grace Liu, who helped lead the study published in the journal Genes & Development.
"However we showed for the first time that reactivating Pax5 enabled the cells to resume their normal development and lose their cancer-like qualities, effectively curing the leukemia. What was intriguing for us was that simply restoring Pax5 was enough to normalize these cancer cells, despite the other genetic changes."
In people with leukemia, abnormal white blood cells build up in the bone marrow.
The researchers said the new findings suggest that forcing B-ALL cells to resume their normal development could provide a new strategy for treating leukemia.
The genetic switch technology used to study Pax5 could also be used to examine "tumor suppressor" genes in other cancers, as well.
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