News release

From: South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI)

SAHMRI’s Professor Tim Hughes is leading a major new research program to shape the future of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) therapy, aiming to take patients beyond lifelong treatment, into sustained treatment‑free remission.

Clinical Director of the Precision Cancer Medicine Theme at SAHMRI and Professor of Haematology at Adelaide University, Prof Hughes has been awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant to fund the five-year program, bringing together national and international collaborators.

The program builds on more than a decade of research spearheaded by Prof Hughes, which has proven that therapy does not have to be lifelong for patients who achieve a deep molecular response.

Sustained treatment-free remission is now the goal of therapy for most CML patients, but only one in three are currently able to achieve it, with most requiring ongoing therapy to keep the disease under control.

“While current therapies have transformed CML into a manageable chronic illness, lifelong therapy remains the norm for most patients,” Prof Hughes said.

“This imposes substantial burdens, including side effects that impair quality of life and the ongoing risk of drug resistance.”

The focus is increasingly shifting from finding an effective treatment, to understanding why some patients can safely stop therapy while others can’t.

A series of laboratory studies and clinical trials will further investigate the barriers to achieving treatment-free remission.

“Immunotherapy may hold the key to further expanding the pool of people capable of achieving and maintaining TFR, but we are exploring several promising approaches,” Prof Hughes said.

“We’ve reached a point where scientific advances allow us to ask deeper questions about response and relapse, that’s where the next breakthroughs will come from.”