A top Newcastle University scientist has discovered how so-called "chameleon cancers" which affect children can change the kind of cancer they are to evade treatment.
Dr Simon Bomken, a clinical scientist and honorary consultant based at the university and the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust, has been part of an international team investigating the rare and terrifying scenario where some kinds of leukaemia fight back against treatments - sometimes even by "switching to become a different type of cancer".
Dr Bomken - along with experts at the Princess Maxima Center in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and at the University of Birmingham - has identified the gene which allows a common kind of cancer called B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) to resist potentially life-saving treatments.
