£1 Million Grant to Transform MDS Treatment
Professor Shahram Kordasti and Professor Mieke Van Hemelrijck from King’s College London have been awarded a £1 million grant, funded by the Medical Research Council, to lead a major international research effort that could revolutionise how MDS is understood and treated. This funding will power an international collaboration called the i4MDS Consortium (International Integrative Innovative Immunology for MDS Consortium), which brings together 27 leading research centres across 12 countries.
Unpicking the role of the immune system in MDS is a major scientific research area. Scientists now know that the immune system plays a central role in MDS, but it behaves very differently from patient to patient. In some patients, an overactive immune system drives inflammation in the bone marrow, while in others, an underactive immune system allows abnormal cells to grow unchecked. This variation helps explain why treatments that work well for some patients don’t work for others, and highlights the urgent need for a smarter, more personalised approach to care.
The aims of the i4MDS consortium are therefore:
- To identify new immune targets, discovering new ways to treat MDS by targeting the immune system more precisely.
- To develop smarter, standardised immune profiling tools, creating reliable tests that measure the types, numbers and activity of immune cells so that immune information can be used alongside genetic information to guide treatment decisions.
- To build the international infrastructure needed to make immune profiling a routine part of MDS diagnosis and care worldwide.
As Professor Kordasti explains: “This grant will help us identify novel and targetable immune pathways and immune-dysregulation subtypes in MDS and develop standardised tools to stratify patients so they can be better matched to treatments most likely to benefit them.” In summary, this research could in future provide opportunities for personalised medicine by supporting doctors to use both a patient’s genetic and immune profile to choose the treatment most likely to work for them.
For more information please read: King’s College London
