Animals Research at UBC

Leukemia therapy from mice

Leukemia therapy from mice

Treatment for leukemia, the most common cancer affecting children, relied on early research in mice.

Researchers studied mice to learn that all malignant cells must be destroyed to successfully treat cancer and that early treatment is key to survival, information that is the basis for modern cancer chemotherapy.

Scientists are now using genetically modified mice to explore gene therapies to treat leukemia, a blood cancer that accounts for about a third of childhood cancers. Only 25 years ago, children with acute lymphocytic leukemia had a 70 per cent chance of dying within five years. Advances using animal research have reversed this prognosis; children with leukemia now have an 80 per cent chance of survival.

Leukemia remains the number one disease killer of children under 19, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada.

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