Exciting News: MRC funded CLL Research Accepted for publication in Blood

Our paper explores the complex mechanisms behind drug resistance in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) and identifies a novel biomarker that could potentially help predict how well patients will respond to standard targeted therapies.

This breakthrough would not have been possible without the support of the Medical Research Council (MRC). The research was driven by an MRC grant held by Profs Andrea Pepper, Chris Pepper, and Simon Mitchell, which funded Dr. Emma Kennedy to perform the majority of the pivotal experimental and analytical work detailed in the paper.

In recent years, B-cell receptor (BCR) inhibitors (such as ibrutinib) have transformed the treatment landscape for CLL. However, a significant challenge remains: some patients experience incomplete responses or eventually develop resistance to these drugs, even without acquiring the common BTK genetic mutations typically associated with drug failure. Our team set out to understand why this happens by investigating an alternative signalling route: the Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) pathway.