Researchers at Wellcome Sanger Institute at the University of Cambridge, University of Nottingham and their collaborators have discovered that an active ingredient in eye drops developed for the treatment of retinal neovascular disease has shown promise for treating Leukemia. Not only that, the results so far show that this compound can kill leukemia blood cells without harming non-leukemic blood cells.

The results, published recently in Nature Communications reveal a potential new treatment approach for an aggressive blood cancer with a poor prognosis. Mainstream AML treatments have remained unchanged for over 30 years, with the current treatment being chemotherapy, and the majority of people’s cancer cannot be cured. A subtype of AML, driven by rearrangements in the MLL gene has a particularly bad prognosis.