Leukemia Fact Sheet

CIRM funds cancer research including basic research into cancer stem cells, the cells that many researchers believe are at the heart of cancer. Other projects are moving the basic research toward new therapies, including one clinical trial that is already underway.

If you want to learn more about CIRM funding decisions or make a comment directly to our board, join us at a public meeting. You can find agendas for upcoming public meetings on our meetings page.

Learn more about stem cell research:
Stem Cell Basics Primer | Stem Cell Videos | What We Fund

Find clinical trials:
CIRM does not track stem cell clinical trials. If you or a family member is interested in participating in a clinical trial, please see the national trial database to find a trial near you: clinicaltrials.gov

Stem cell research for leukemia

Leukemia is a cancer of the blood cells. The stem cells in the bone marrow normally form all cells of the blood system, including the red blood cells, platelets, and immune cells. In people with leukemia, the bone marrow stem cells create abnormal immune cells that aren’t able to carry out their normal job of fighting infection.

Eventually, these abnormal cells crowd out the normal blood cells. Without a sufficient population of working blood cells, people with leukemia develop symptoms such as anemia, bleeding and infections.

Recent research has shown that in addition to these abnormal white cells, leukemia patients also have a small population of cells called leukemia stem cells. Scientists suspect that these cells evade treatments that kill leukemia cells and then later go on to cause a relapse. The goal of stem cell research for leukemia is to find ways of destroying these leukemia stem cells.

Catriona Jamieson of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center discusses a clinical trial for a pre-leukemia condition that was based in part on CIRM funding

Disease Teams

University of California, San Diego

The group led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego will test drug candidates already in use or under evaluation in the pharmaceutical industry to see which are most effective at eradicating the leukemia stem cells in a lab dish. Once they have identified drugs that seem effective in the lab dish, they will begin testing those drugs in other models of leukemia.

Read a summary of this project

Stanford University

The Stanford University team has found a protein on the surface of leukemia stem cells that protects those cells from elimination by the patient’s own immune system. They call this protein a “don’t eat me” signal. They will create an antibody therapy that blocks that protein and makes the leukemia stem cell available to be attacked and destroyed by the immune system. .

Read a summary of this project

CIRM Grants Targeting Leukemia

Researcher name	Institution	Grant Title	Funding
Gay Crooks	University of California, Los Angeles	Forming the Hematopoietic Niche from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells	$1,375,983
Chong-Xian Pan	University of California, Davis	Combinatorial Chemistry Approaches to Develop LIgands against Leukemia Stem Cells	$2,567,397
Catriona Jamieson	University of California, San Diego	Preclinical development of a pan Bcl2 inhibitor for cancer stem cell directed therapy	$3,341,758
Markus Muschen	Children's Hospital of Los Angeles	Dual targeting of tyrosine kinase and BCL6 signaling for leukemia stem cell eradication	$3,607,305
Catriona Jamieson	University of California, San Diego	Derivation and Characterization of Myeloproliferative Disorder Stem Cells from Human ES Cells	$3,065,572
Emmanuelle Passegue	University of California, San Francisco	Mechanisms Underlying the Responses of Normal and Cancer Stem Cells to Environmental and Therapeutic Insults	$2,274,368
Dennis Carson	University of California, San Diego	Development of Highly Active Anti-Leukemia Stem Cell Therapy (HALT)	$19,999,826
Irving Weissman	Stanford University	Development of Therapeutic Antibodies Targeting Human Acute Myeloid Leukemia Stem Cells	$19,999,996
Michael Cleary	Stanford University	Prostaglandin pathway regulation of self-renwal in hematopoietic and leukemia stem cells	$1,244,455
Catriona Jamieson	University of California, San Diego	Derivation and Characterization of Cancer Stem Cells from Human ES Cells	$642,500
Mehrdad Abedi	University of California, Davis	RUNNING TITLE: Stem Cell Gene Therapy for HIV in AIDS Lymphoma Patients	$74,195
			Total: $58,193,355.00