Hospital hosts hunt for improved
treatment in blood cancer cases

The first, beginning this month, will give patients at St James’s Hospital in Leeds access to a promising new therapy for two disorders which cause blood clotting and bleeding.

The improved care is being delivered under the trials acceleration programme set up by the charity Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research.

Around one in five patients with the two conditions known as polycythaemia vera and essential thrombocythaemia cannot tolerate or do not respond to existing treatments.

The only alternatives available involve drugs that carry a significantly increased risk of severe side effects such as leukaemia.

Using the drug Ruxolitinib, it is hoped to target a gene abnormality which affects normal blood cell production. This has been shown in related trials to considerably improve abnormal blood counts and symptoms, leading to improved quality of life.

St James’s is one of 13 centres in Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research’s trials acceleration programme network, which connects blood cancer trials at Leeds with other hospitals across the UK and is designed to speed up the recruitment of patients.

The network increases efficiency and ensures that potentially life-saving drugs are proven and made available as soon as possible.

The charity’s clinical trials co-ordinator, Prof Peter Hillmen, consultant haematologist in Leeds, said: “Ruxolitinib has shown considerable promise that it could improve quality of life and life-expectancy for a significant number of patients with these serious, but relatively rare, blood disorders.

“The opening of six new clinical trials this year will give local patients with a range of blood cancers new options if current treatments fail or are unsuitable.”