Tag: Blood

The power of CAR-T cell therapy

The CAR – T Apheresis team with Professor Anastasios Karadimitris

To mark Blood Cancer Awareness Month, Dr Lucy Cook, Consultant Haematologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer from the Department of Immunology and Inflammation, shares how CAR-T cell therapy is transforming blood cancer treatment for patients.

September is Blood Cancer Awareness month, a time dedicated to raising awareness of blood cancers, which often don’t receive the same recognition as other types of cancer types. According to the charity Blood Cancer UK, over half of British adults cannot name a single blood cancer symptom. With over 100 different types of blood cancer, patients often know the name of their specific diagnosis (such as leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma, myelodysplastic syndrome, CML etc.) but may not realise that these are all forms of blood cancer. Collectively, blood cancers are the third most common group of cancers. Raising awareness among both the public and health care professionals is critical to improving early detection and diagnosis.

At Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, September gives us the opportunity to reflect on the progress made since last year’s Blood Cancer Awareness Month.  One of the most exciting aspects has been the delivery of CAR-T cell therapy for lymphomas (a type of blood cancer that affects white blood cells) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (a rare type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow). This year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also approved several new bispecific antibody therapies (BITEs) for lymphoma and myeloma (a type of cancer that develops from plasma cells in the bone marrow). BITEs are special proteins designed to help the immune system fight cancer. CAR-T and BITEs are a new wave of therapies, that harness the immune system to kill the cancer cells, rather than relying on conventional chemotherapy.  Following successful clinical trials, these therapies are now broadly approved for use in patients who have not responded to chemotherapy, offering potentially curative treatments for patients who previously faced poor prognoses. Clinical trials for CAR-T cell therapy are in progress for multiple myeloma, which is really exciting, offering hope for longer remissions for patients with a cancer subtype where no curative treatments currently exist.

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Know your numbers – How home monitoring is redefining hypertension care

Dr Amit KauraDr Amit Kaura, Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the National Heart and Lung Institute, discusses the future of blood pressure monitoring in this blog post for ‘Know your Numbers!’ week – a campaign encouraging people to check their blood pressure.

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a major global health issue, affecting over 1.3 billion people. Yet, despite its prevalence, many people don’t fully understand what hypertension is, how it impacts health, and how they can manage it effectively.

Hypertension occurs when the force of blood against the walls of your arteries is consistently too high. This force, known as blood pressure, is measured in two numbers: systolic pressure, the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats, and diastolic pressure, the pressure when your heart is resting between beats. A normal blood pressure reading is considered to be around 120/80 mmHg, while readings consistently at 140/90 mmHg or higher indicate high blood pressure.

Often called the ‘silent killer,’ hypertension typically presents no symptoms until significant damage has occurred. Left unchecked, uncontrolled hypertension can lead to serious health issues, including heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure.

My journey into hypertension research is rooted in my background in data analytics in cardiovascular sciences. Hypertension, with its inherently numerical nature, fascinated me from the start. It is not just a static measurement; it is dynamic, with fluctuations that occur throughout the day and in response to various stimuli. This complexity piqued my interest and led me to explore the deeper intricacies of how we define and diagnose hypertension.

The traditional approach of diagnosing hypertension based on a single cut-off value – usually 140/90 mmHg – seemed overly simplistic to me. Through my research, I began to question whether this binary threshold truly captures the nuanced reality of hypertension. There is a wealth of data on the fluctuations and patterns of blood pressure that could offer more insight into cardiovascular risk than a one-time measurement.

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Von Willebrand disease – hidden in plain sight

Dr Tom McKinnon

Every year on 17 April, World Haemophilia Day is recognised worldwide to raise awareness of haemophilia, von Willebrand Disease, and other inherited bleeding disorders. From his early days in lecture halls to his current work in research labs, Dr. Tom McKinnon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Immunology and Inflammation, shares his expertise. He unravels the complexities of Von Willebrand factor (VWF), advocating for greater awareness of this commonly misunderstood condition. 

I can vividly recall an early morning undergraduate lecture I attended over 20 years ago now (has it really been that long?!). In a slightly hungover state, I listened to the lecturer describe a protein that helps blood cells stick together (clot) when you bleed called Von Willebrand Factor and Von Willebrand’s disease – a common inherited condition that can make you bleed more easily than normal. At the time, I didn’t think much about it, but two years and a BSc later, I found myself at Imperial undertaking a PhD investigating the structure and function of VWF, beginning my scientific journey into the world of the largest protein found in the blood, and in my humble opinion, the most fascinating.  

Circulating around the body, VWF is like a giant molecular ball of string that responds to the force of blood flow. When we damage our blood vessels, this ball of string sticks to the damage site, and unwinds and begins to capture platelets that are speeding past, thereby limiting blood loss.  

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Blood transfusion in sub-Saharan Africa: 200 years on

200 years on from the first successful human-to-human blood transfusion, this procedure has revolutionised patient care. However, there is still work to be done in sub-Saharan Africa, as Professor Kathryn Maitland explains.

Each year, around 2.5 million units of blood are transfused in the UK – that’s enough to fill two Olympic sized swimming pools! Since James Blundell performed the first successful human blood transfusion in 1818, this life-saving medical intervention has made many advances to ensure its accessed throughout the world. An important part of this is ensuring that any health system has adequate supplies of quality-assured and safe blood for transfusion through national and regional blood transfusion services (BTS). (more…)

Death of a cell: the vital process of tidying up cell debris to prevent blood clots

In this post, Dr Anusha Seneviratne breaks down the conundrum of cell death and how this process protects our bodies from blood clots.

Your cells die every day. Don’t worry, your body is protecting itself. In a process known as apoptosis or programmed cell death, cells that are no longer needed commit suicide. Some cells are only required for a short time, they may be infected by a virus or develop harmful cancerous mutations. Cell death is also an essential part of development from an embryo. For example, mouse paws begin as spade-like structures and only form the individual digits as the cells in between die. During apoptosis the cells fragment into smaller apoptotic bodies, and their cell surface is flipped open to display lipid molecules called phosphatidylserines, which act as an ‘eat me’ signal to recruit cells called macrophages to engulf them, before their contents spill out and damage the surrounding tissue. This is a process known as efferocytosis. (more…)

Blood Cancer Awareness Month: all roads lead to EVI1

PhD student Philippa May reflects on being a scientist in the field blood cancer, from working in a leukaemia diagnostic laboratory to a research laboratory. 

For the last 10 years I have been a clinical scientist in genetics working across various London NHS Trusts. Whilst I loved diagnostics, last year I left my job to complete my PhD. I worked in a part of life sciences called cytogenetics. This meant when a patient was diagnosed with blood cancer, I would analyse their chromosomes – the structures into which DNA is organised – from their blood or bone marrow to look for specific abnormalities. For some patients, this can lead to a definitive diagnosis. For others a refined prognosis, and in some, it’s simply a way of monitoring how well the patient’s leukaemia is responding to their treatment. (more…)

How does the charity Leuka support blood cancer research at Imperial?

In this post, four Imperial researchers write about the different ways in which Leuka has supported their work at the College.

Leuka is a charity that supports life-saving research into the causes and treatment of leukaemia and other blood cancers. Funding from dedicated charities such as Leuka provides an important source of support which enables high-quality research programmes here at Imperial to develop and progress. (more…)