Niño Jesús University Hospital for Children

Newborns with Down syndrome, as they grow, face a higher risk of developing leukemia compared to those without the syndrome. An international team has sequenced the genes of more than 1.1 million cells from fetuses with and without Down syndrome, and it has discovered that the extra chromosome 21 they have alters the way DNA is packaged inside cells. According to the authors, whose research is published in Nature, this difference affects the regulation of certain genes and may contribute to the development of leukemia.

A phase 2 clinical trial has analysed the safety and efficacy of adding immunotherapy to traditional chemotherapy to treat a subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children under one year of age. This subtype of leukaemia, although rare in absolute terms, is the most common in children of this age, and its prognosis in this age group had not improved in recent years. The immunotherapy used, a bispecific antibody that binds to tumour cells on the one hand and T lymphocytes on the other, improved two-year survival from 66% to 93% in treated patients, according to The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).