A NEW drug trial is being spearheaded in the North East to help children with leukaemia who are no longer responding to treatment.

It is the first time young people aged six months to 18 with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) have received a pioneering class of drugs called aurora kinase inhibitors.

The trial is being led by Newcastle’s Great North Children’s Hospital and is also being run at four other clinical centres around the country.

Fifteen children with ALL and AML will get the drug AT9283, which is aimed at preventing the growth and survival of cancer cells by blocking the action of two key aurora kinase proteins.

Chief investigator Prof Josef Vormoor, chairman of children’s health at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, said: “It’s devastating to have to tell parents of a child with leukaemia that the disease has returned. Or that it’s unlikely their child can be treated with existing drugs.

“So I’m incredibly excited about the launch of this trial, to see if a new drug can treat the disease when a child has stopped responding to current treatments. This drug will only be used in cases where a child has not responded to traditional lines of treatment and we hope that this drug may offer a cure to these patients.

“Realistically, there is a long way to go and we do not yet know what success the drug will have, so I do not want to raise patients’ hopes.

“However, we would not be trialling this new drug if we didn’t think it had the potential to be a promising development.”

Previous laboratory studies of the new drug have shown exciting results and it has been tested in a small number of adults, children and adolescents with solid tumours.

The trial will last for up to three years and will enable medics to establish the correct drug dose and see if it can treat children and adolescents with leukaemia. The youngsters will receive the medication intravenously in three separate, consecutive 24-hour infusions over 72 hours, in 21-day cycles.