Large granular lymphocyte (LGL) leukemia is a rare type of blood cancer. Like many other types of cancer, it is becoming more common, which is bad news because it is difficult to treat. Now an international study led by scientists from the University of Helsinki has found that in LGL body’s own immune system attacks itself. These finding may help creating new treatments for LGL leukemia.
Large granular lymphocyte (LGL) leukemia is a rare type of blood cancer, which resembles an autoimmune disease. Image credit: qimono via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
LGL leukemia is actually rarely fatal, but it causes several chronic symptoms, which have a debilitating impact on one’s quality of life. It increases the risk of infection, anemia, joint pain and many other persistent symptoms. This is because in LGL leukemia the body’s own immune cells, T cells, form the cancer cells. In other words, this disease makes the body attack itself using its own killer cells, which is why scientists often say that LGL is very similar to diseases. Sadly, while there are treatments, usually they cannot provide long-term relief.
Now an international team of researchers analyzed a dataset containing 200 LGL leukemia patients’ samples from Finland, Germany, Italy, the USA and Japan. Scientists found that immune cells of LGL patients attack the body's own cells, but cancerous T cells can actually be separated from the healthy ones. Previously this was notoriously difficult to do because LGL cancer cells bear a very close resemblance to normal T cells found in blood. Researchers say that their study proves that a successful LGL leukemia therapy would target the whole immune system, not only the cancer cells.
Researchers believe that techniques used in this study could be applied in other cancer researches as well. Dipabarna Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the study, said: “The immune system in these patients is overactivated and keeps giving the tumour cells cues to keep growing as well as provides them with a favourable environment. We believe that similar findings will be made in other cancers. In fact, our goal is to use the same techniques to decipher the role of the immune system in other cancers too”.
Large granular lymphocyte leukemia may be rarely lethal, but it is a serious disease. It’s only discovered in 1985 and comprises around 2-3% of all cases of chronic lymphoproliferative disorders. LGL leukemia is usually diagnosed in the older population with the average age of diagnosis being over 66 years of age.
Source: University of Helsinki