Adult acute myelogenous leukemia—also known as acute myeloid leukemia (AML)—is a blood cancer in which the bone marrow makes a large number of abnormal blood cells.
About 20,000 new cases of AML are diagnosed each year in the US with a 5-year survival rate of around 29%. In 2022, there were nearly 12,000 deaths from AML. Many AML patients—a majority of which are over 60 years old—relapse after treatment. Blood stem cell transplant can be curative, but many older patients do not qualify, showing that there is a significant unmet medical need in treating AML.
That’s why the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) awarded $6,000,000 to Dr. Karin Gaensler at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to support development of a safe and effective vaccine for the blood cancer AML to improve relapse-free survival.
To develop the cancer vaccine, Dr. Gaensler and her team will engineer the patient’s blood stem cells to maximize stimulation of leukemia-specific killing activity and reintroduce engineered cells back to the patient to target and kill residual leukemia stem cells.
This approach holds the potential for long-term effectiveness as it targets both AML blasts and leukemic stem cells that are often the source of relapse.
This award is a continuation of a previous CIRM grant that will support the manufacture of the vaccine and the completion of late-stage testing and preparation needed to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to begin a clinical trial.
The Stem Cellar 
Watch Lineage VAC2 in this space. Allogenic so larger reach. Godspeed
My dad died of AML in 2009. What’s the theory on administering treatment at night time when the body is essentially in repair mode due to the natural circadian rhythm effect? I’m no scientist but it’s something that’s always been on my mind. For example, what’s the rate of death for those with AML from the hours of 8 PM – 5 AM (excluding life support to prolong life briefly for family members to say goodbye)? How much research has been done on this type of hypothesis? P.S. Any advancement is wonderful and I’m grateful others and their families have been able to get treatment that has progressed since my dad was diagnosed in 2009.