Messi and José Carreras join forces for rare childhood leukaemia research

The Leo Messi Foundation and the Josep Carreras Foundation will be paying for an intense two-year investigation into acute lymphoblastic B-cell leukaemia with translocation, an extremely infrequent form of the disease, but one with a very poor prognosis.

It usually affects children under a year old.

Messi started financing research into childhood cancer in his native Argentina in February, and his foundation also supports a paediatric cancer research group at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron hospital, renewing its contract to continue to do so in March.

The project Ningún Niño Con Leucemia ('No Child With Leukaemia') is focusing on a type of blood cancer which affects just six children a year in Spain and the diagnosis of which is nearly always terminal from the start, although the cause is not known.

Whilst acute lymphoblastic B-cell leukaemia is the most common type of childhood cancer and accounts for a third of all diagnoses of the disease in paediatric patients, and is highly curable – over 85% will make a full recovery – the type known as 'with translocation' and affecting infants – t(4; 11) (MLL-AF4+) - usually develops and spreads rapidly towards the nervous system, making it extremely hard, nearly impossible, to cure.

The investigation team is led by Dr Pablo Menéndez of the Josep Carreras-Clinical Campus Leukaemia Research Institute, part of the University of Barcelona, and his group will receive funding for the next two years from the Leo Messi Foundation.

Photograph of Messi (left) and Carreras (right) by the Leo Messi Foundation and Josep Carreras Foundation