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Progress in leukaemia research

News (27/01/2025)

Progress in leukaemia research: when the leukaemia cells reprogramme normal cells remotely...

The Clinical Cell Therapy Laboratory at the Jules Bordet Institute –H.U.B,  headed by Professor Laurence Lagneaux, has just taken a major step forward in our understanding of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, the most common form of the disease in Western countries.  

Dr Nathan Dubois and Professor Basile Stamatopoulos have discovered that leukaemia cells can literally “reprogramme” normal cells in their environment via extracellular vesicles.  These vesicles, which are 10 000x smaller than a millimetre and 50x smaller than a cell, are nanoparticles released by the leukaemia cells. They notably contain genetic material and can merge with other cells and thereby pass on their content to them. 

"It is rather as if the leukaemia cells can post parcels that contain reprogramming instructions,” explains Basile Stamatopoulos, Professor at the ULB Faculty of Medicine and the research study’s principal investigator. 

These researchers established that leukaemia vesicles were internalised by normal monocytes, the white blood cells that act in our immune defence. After “swallowing” these vesicles, the monocytes are completely reprogrammed into pseudo-feeder cells that then produce survival factors that protect the leukaemia cells from spontaneous death or death induced by chemotherapy. In addition to their reprogrammed genetics, these monocytes also release soluble factors that attract other monocytes, thereby further amplifying the creation of a protective environment for the leukaemia cells. 

More precisely, the research team at the Jules Bordet Institute – H.U.B has identified a key RNA that induces the monocyte reprogramming. This research - financed by the Jules Bordet Association and the FNRS and carried out in close cooperation with the Clinical Haematology Department under Professor Nathalie Meuleman and Professor Virginie De Wilde at the H.U.B - has just been published in its entirety in HemaSphere, the official journal of the European Haematology Association (EHA).