Funded by the Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Professor Alex Thompson, University of Nottingham
Award: £94,531.48
Awarded July 2025
The challenge
Childhood leukaemia survival may be seen as a ‘success story’ of modern cancer treatment, with survival rates above average, but current treatments can cause numerous long-term health problems. The goal of childhood leukaemia research is now to protect normal cells while still killing the cancer. This means that researchers need new ways to compare healthy cells and leukaemia cells, ensuring that any new treatments are less toxic to children.
Studies in twins show that childhood leukaemia develops in the womb – but we do not know precisely at which stages cancerous changes occur. These early changes allow leukaemia to ‘seed’ and grow alongside normal cells, so understanding them is vital to improve treatment. These leukaemia ‘seeds’ develop from immature cells which, if they survive in the womb, grow out of control and result in the early and aggressive onset of leukaemia.
The project
In this project, Professor Alex Thompson and his team at the University of Nottingham aim to combine two Nobel Prize-winning technologies to learn more about the initiation and development of leukaemia. Firstly, they will make normal stem cells in the lab that can make all of the different tissues of the body. Then, they will change genes within these cells to create or repair damage typically associated with early childhood leukaemia cells.
The team will develop the childhood leukaemia-initiating ‘seeds’ alongside normal stem cells in ‘twin-based’ models. They hope that this will help them identify early-stage leukaemia changes to target with kinder drugs. By testing cancer cells alongside healthy cells, they will be able to rule out drugs that affect normal blood development or a child’s ability to fight infection.
The impact
The twin-based models will provide a platform to identify kinder treatments that can fight cancer whilst protecting normal cells. This will improve treatment development and ensure any drugs entering clinical trials are as safe and effective as possible.
The Little Princess Trust
This project was funded by The Little Princess Trust. They fund research projects in partnership with CCLG, combining CCLG's research funding and grant management expertise with The Little Princess Trust's fantastic fundraising to support world-class scientific research.