Patient care pioneer award for new blood cancer app
A new approach to personalise cancer care has been recognised by a leading research charity.
Professor Francesco Forconi has been awarded the first ever Patient Care Pioneer Award by Leukaemia UK.
The award will help advance an algorithm to improve the care of Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL).
CLL is the most common blood cancer in adults. However, only 25% of patients with CLL will ever need treatment.
Southampton researchers are developing an app to identify the other 75% who will not need treatment earlier.
This could put patients’ minds at ease. It could prevent unnecessary hospital visits and reduce the strain on healthcare services.
Remote monitoring scheme
University Hospital Southampton (UHS) has introduced an innovative Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) scheme. This allows patients to be remotely monitored by a specialist nurse-led team, with access to secondary care as needed.
The researchers aim to identify suitable patients for this scheme earlier. They plan to do this by developing a new tool to identify patients at a low risk of their condition worsening.
This tool will generate a risk score for each patient. This will be used with clinical data to determine which patients are suitable for the PIFU scheme.
Researchers hope to soon start testing the system to identify suitable patients for PIFU in a clinical trial. This will run across the Wessex region, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.
Identifying suitable patients
The B-cell receptor (BCR) plays a key role in CLL, driving the disease by promoting excessive growth and survival of cancer cells. Differences in BCR have been linked to how fast the disease progresses.
Prof Forconi’s team will use data from nearly 2,000 patients to develop a new BCR-driven risk score.
The team will focus on a specific protein of the BCR complex. It is called surface immunoglobulin M. They will use the amount of this present on B cells, and how well it can send signals within these cells, to generate the score.
Prof Forconi is a Consultant Haematologist at UHS and a Professor of Haematology at the University of Southampton.
He said: “I am honoured to receive the inaugural Patient Care Pioneer Award from Leukaemia UK.
“Our work promises to revolutionise the current ‘watch and wait’ approach, providing a more personalised and efficient care pathway. This will prioritise patient well-being and optimise medical resource allocation.”
The project brings together collaborators from the Cancer Care Directorate at UHS, the Clinical Informatics Research Unit (CIRU) and Prof Forconi’s Cancer B cell Group at the University of Southampton.
Prof Forconi added: “I am grateful to many colleagues, including haematology consultant Dr David Dutton and data scientist Ben Sale, for committing their time into this ambitious effort.”
Image courtesy of Leukaemia UK