Geoffrey Uy, MD

Funded by Kelly Chase and the St. Louis Blues Alumni 2025 Puck Cancer charity hockey game in support of Hockey Fights Cancer powered by the V Foundation

AML (acute myeloid leukemia) and MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) are serious blood cancers. In some patients, these cancers have a genetic change that makes them much harder to treat, and most current treatments do not work for very long. Our research is testing a new way to turn this weakness against the cancer. Cancer cells are like cars driving with damaged brakes. They keep growing even when their DNA is damaged. We plan to combine an existing leukemia treatment with a new pill that blocks one of the cancer cell’s backup repair systems. One drug is decitabine, which is already used to treat AML and MDS. The other is a new pill that may stop cancer cells from fixing damage. We will conduct a clinical trial to test this new treatment combination. First, we will find a safe dose for giving the two drugs together. We will also look for early signs that the drug combination works better than either drug alone. Finally, we will study blood and bone marrow samples to understand how the treatment affects the cancer cells.