Program Leader Dr. Aly Karsan and Principal Investigators Drs Connie Eaves, Andrew Weng, Martin Hirst, have been awarded nearly $7.5 million over 5 years from the Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) for the Terry Fox New Frontier Program Project Grant in Exploiting Pathogenic Mechanisms in Acute Leukemia for Clinical Translation.
The overall long-term goal of this Program is to better understand the difference between normal blood-forming cells and leukemic cells and thereby to identify and exploit vulnerable disease-causing pathways that may be shared across different types of acute leukemias that can then be translated into useful biomarkers and treatments that are more effective and less toxic. Four projects and two supporting cores, providing key technical support, are proposed that will focus on examples of the worst types of leukemia known, develop human models of these and, in concert with world experts in this field, will use these models to search for common therapeutic targets.
