IMPAct-L

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common form of acute leukemia in adults that, although having favourable outcomes for younger patients upon receiving treatment, has a very poor prognosis in the elderly. After treatment with chemotheraphy, even patients that clinically achieve complete remission (CR) can relapse through the persistence of minimal residual disease (MRD), with fatal consequences. The low sensitivity of current diagnostic technologies based on flow cytometry and bone marrow biopsy often prevents early MRD detection, while being highly invasive and costly. Accurate and early diagnosis of MRD would allow the application of appropriate theraphy, improving the prognosis of the patients. Thus, the scope of this project is to discover new biomarkers of AML through Next Generation Sequencing, and to design, fabricate, test and optimize new lab-on-a-chip (LOC) systems based on Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) and microfluidics for early detection of MRD in AML.