British Trial Hope for Leukaemia Patients

Could a British medical trial herald a cure for the commonest type of blood cancer? BBC reporter Simon Cox has had Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia or CLL for more than a decade. Like him, many patients don’t have health problems for years. For those who do need treatment, options include chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants.

CLL is a disease of the immune system – the lymphocyte cells which fight infections and then die, instead grow out of control and can’t be “switched off”.

Simon Cox talks to Peter Hillmen, professor of experimental haematology at St James’ hospital in Leeds in northern England who’s on a mission to find a cure. He’s recruited 50 CLL patients – whose disease returned after chemotherapy - onto the Clarity trial. They are given two non-chemotherapy drugs - Venetoclax and Ibrutinib – to target elements of CLL - the proliferation of cells and their inability to die off.

Andy Wright is on the trial. Initially 84% of his bone marrow cells contained CLL. After eight months that figure had fallen to just 0.0085%.

A third of the trial patients have no trace of CLL – an unprecedented response which Professor Hillmen believes means a cure is now much closer.

(Photo: Simon Cox with Andy Wright, one of the patients on the Clarity trial © BBC)