Children with Down Syndrome have a high risk of developing a pre-leukaemia, called transient myeloproliferative disorder (TMD), during the newborn period. One in four of these children with TMD will go on to develop acute myeloid leukaemia. The project objectives are to establish an early detection strategy by assessing the level of GATA1s in the peripheral blood of down syndrome children at risk of myeloid leukaemia down syndrome, and, thus a molecularly defined population of infants in whom a preventative drug could be trialed in the future and to identify novel driver mutations as the “3rd hit” that predicts progression from TMD to myeloid leukaemia down syndrome/acute megakaryocytic leukaemia in children with down syndrome.
Started: 1 January 2018
Ending: 30 June 2019
