Speaker
Description
Leukemia is the most prevalent cancer among children worldwide, with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (pB-ALL) being the most common subtype. pB-ALL is known for its genetic diversity, featuring various subtypes that involve recurrent and sometimes hereditary genetic alterations. A two-step model suggests that while these genetic alterations may occur before birth, additional secondary genetic events are crucial for the transformation into leukemia. Environmental factors, such as exposure to extremely low-frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF), have been studied for their potential linkage to childhood leukemia, but results from animal studies have been inconclusive due to the limitations of available models.
During the course of the European Commission-funded ARIMMORA project, a new transgenic mouse model, Sca1-ETV6-RUNX1, was developed, which mimics pB-ALL and has been used to study ELF-MF exposure in a pilot study. The German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) has launched the research program “Radiation Protection in the Process of Power Grid Expansion”, which funds several projects on childhood leukemia. Two of them investigate the impact of ELF-MF exposure on mice using the mouse model from ARIMMORA. In the first study, young mice were exposed and specifically examined for changes in their immune status up to 28 days after birth. The second still ongoing study is investigating whether mice of this model develop leukemia over the course of two years after being exposed to ELF-MF first in utero and then up to 3 months of age. In this talk, those studies will be presented in more detail.
