Scientists to create drug to kill cancer cells

Scientists from the University of Glasgow are investigating how the blood cancer leukaemia develops in the bone marrow. Professor William Cushley, professor of molecular immunology in the School of Life Sciences, and Professor Brad Ozanne, honorary associate of the Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology, have been granted £115,000 for the two-year project by the blood cancer charity Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research. The team are studying how acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common form of cancer in children, spreads in the blood. ALL is characterised by the uncontrollable multiplication of mutated white blood cells in the bone marrow, which crowd out healthy blood cells. The Glasgow researchers will look at the role of specific 'receptor' molecules on the surface of leukaemia cells that are responsible for interacting and binding with other cells. This interaction causes the leukaemia cell surface molecules to signal instructions to the cell to multiply. It is believed that these signals also play a key role in overriding the natural cell death process of leukaemia cells, so that mutated cells rapidly build up in the blood.