PedAL Initiative Takes Aim at Pediatric Relapsed Leukemia

Gwen Nichols, MD, Chief Medical Officer at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Rye Brook, New York, discusses the goal of the APAL2020SC Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) Screening trial, which is to establish a data-driven developmental therapeutics program.

Dr. Nichols shared that the trial’s novelty lies in the accumulation of genomic data on children with relapsed leukemia worldwide, which currently exist in fragmented pieces across various institutions. These data have never been collectively annotated or sequenced for all children experiencing relapse.

“We have never collectively annotated that nor had sequencing on all the children with relapse,” she explained. “The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, as part of our PedAL Master trial, we started with a screening trial, which allows pediatric investigators around the [United States] to send their child’s screening blood work for centralized flow and sequencing.”

As part of the program, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society pays the cost of the sequencing for the families of the patients.

These data will help researchers and clinicians elucidate the “genetically altered subsets of acute leukemia at relapse, something we haven’t had before,” she explained. “This information will be priceless for us to understand what targets we need to go after in the future.”