A patient attending University Hospital Galway is the first person in the world to start treatment as part of a clinical trial for a promising new drug for acute leukaemia.

Adult acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow. It is the most common type of acute leukaemia found in adults, with an estimated 18,000 new cases diagnosed worldwide every year. Around 10,000 people die annually from the disease.

Unlike other cancers that begin in an organ before spreading to the bone marrow, AML results in a rapid growth of abnormal white blood cells that gather in the bone marrow, affecting normal blood cell production.

The disease is currently treated with chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation. This new drug, known as GMI-1271, is being developed by a US-based company.

"Based on preclinical data and on a favourable safety profile in healthy volunteers, we believe that GMI-1271 has the potential to be an important new therapy for people with certain blood cancers," explained Prof Michael O'Dwyer of NUI Galway.

He added that this new drug treatment appears to be able to ‘reverse resistance to chemotherapy, which is caused by AML cells' ability to bind to a receptor called E-selectin in the bone marrow'.