The research that was published in Acta Oncologica Journal revealed that there exists a correlation between a certain mutation in MECOM gene in children with Acute Myeloid Leukemia AML and an increased chance of the recurrence of the disease and accordingly a low survival rate. The research found that early change of treatment protocol for those children enables improving cure rates.
Dr. Mariam Alsherif, a member of the research team, revealed that in AML disease there is an abnormal out of control growth of ineffective myeloid cells, and it is the second most common type of leukemia… The cure rate from this disease depends on the disease stage. There is a low risk type that is treated by chemotherapy, and there is a high risk type that has to be treated by bone marrow transplantation (BMT) from the start. There is a third intermediate risk type in which cure depends on the patient’s response to medication. 20% of children with AML have an overexpression of a gene called MECOM
Research findings demonstrate that overexpression in MECOM gene for patients in this intermediate risk type is signaling that these children are in need for a BMT, which will improve their chance of survival and decrease relapse probability. If we performed a test to measure this gene activity for those children as soon as the disease is discovered, we would perform BMT before disease recurrence, which helps improving cure rates.
The research was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Alaa Elhadad, Prof Dr. Hefni Hafez, Prof. Dr. Mahmoud Hamad, and Prof. Dr. Dina Yaseen, and was published in Acta Oncologica Journal in January 2022.