BioCentury
ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Analytics for ALL

How Alacris and collaborators are creating drug response profiles for a rare ALL

August 13, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

With the help of Alacris Theranostics GmbH's analytical platform for predicting treatment responses in cancer, an international research team identified new treatment options for a rare, fatal form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The group predicted that a subset of ALL patients whose cancer cells have a fusion between the genes for transcription factor 3 (TCF3; E2A) and hepatic leukemia factor (HLF) will respond to venetoclax, an inhibitor of B cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2; BCL2).

TCF3-HLF-positive ALL is a rare form of the cancer that affects less than 1% of pediatric ALL patients, but it is one of the few remaining subtypes with no effective treatment. Most patients with the TCF3-HLF fusion are either resistant to standard ALL chemotherapy or relapse shortly after treatment, and life expectancy after diagnosis is less than 2 years. ...