A/Prof Takaomi Sanda, Dr Lim Fang Qi and team have shown how PIK-75, a drug dismissed over 10 years ago, is proving vital in treating aggressive blood cancer, especially in children. T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, or T-ALL is a type of blood cancer that usually afflicts children and progresses quite rapidly through the patient. The team has mapped the various underlying pathways through with T-ALL survives and have found that PIK- 75 is able to inhibit two different pathway mechanisms. Furthermore, they have noticed PIK-75 produced a strong cytotoxicity against T-ALL cells at lower doses as compared to the dosage rates needed for other drugs.
Their findings sets the stage to create a drug for clinical administration to current patients, and also for those who experience a relapse of this cancer later in adulthood.
