Ongoing Research

Fiscal Year 2013 CureSearch Research

Scientist Explores Gene to Increase Survival Rate of Patients with High-Risk Leukemia

Research could lead to targeted therapies

1/10/2013

Chris Porter, MD from the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital of Denver splits his time seeing pediatric oncology patients and researching targeted therapies aimed at improving treatments for leukemia. His lab at the University of Colorado is focused on using functional genomic screening to identify novel therapeutic strategies for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

With an overall survival rate of 80%, most leukemia patients receive a standardized treatment that has been proven successful. However, when a patient with leukemia relapses, their chances of survival decrease significantly. Dr. Porter plans on researching why these cancers do not respond well to traditional chemotherapy, and what therapies can be created to improve survival rates. He believes that to understand this, doctors need to explore the genes responsible for initiating and maintaining the leukemia and then develop therapies targeted to vulnerabilities that these genes create to successfully treat the disease. Read more