Summary

Significant progress has been made in the treatment of leukaemia. However, many therapies are not curative and rare quiescent leukaemic stem appear to be resistant to tyrosine kinase inhibitors and other chemotherapeutic regimen, possibly due to protective effects by the bone marrow microenvironment, leading to disease progression and relapse. Overall, the 5-year survival rate of adults with leukaemia is only 44%, and for adults with AML only 25% will live for 5 years. This warrants the search for novel, adjunct therapies.
The focus of our research group, therefore, is on the role of the bone marrow microenvironment in leukaemia. On the one hand our goal is to decipher and mechanistically understand the interaction of leukaemia cells with components of the bone marrow niche and the extracellular matrix. On the other hand our goal is to specifically target these interactions with existing or newly designed inhibitors and to introduce these inhibitors into clinical trials, if proven to be successful in various murine models, including xenotransplantation models.