SYDNEY, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Targeting a bone loss mechanism that occurs during the development of leukemia may hold the key to reducing the progression of the disease in children, according to latest Australian-led research.

The pre-clinical findings from identifying the mechanism were promising and suggested that targeting the microenvironment around leukemia cells could not only help fight the cancer, but "simultaneously provide relief for one of its most common and painful side-effects, bone loss", Laurence Cheung, a researcher from the Telethon Kids Cancer Centre who led the study team, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The study focused on the most common form of the cancer in children, a subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Although long-term survival rates for children and adolescents with the medical condition have greatly increased in recent decades - now exceeding 85 percent - outcomes in high-risk sub-groups remain poor, said the researchers.

"When we created a pre-clinical model replicating this kind of leukemia, we witnessed substantial bone loss during the development of the cancer," Cheung said.

The researchers wanted to find out what was causing the bone loss and identified a signal produced by the leukemia cells which instructed cells in the microenvironment to eat away at the bone. The team then used a commercially available drug to target the cells in the microenvironment around the leukemia cells.

"Importantly, we found that this not only compensated for the leukemia-dependent bone fragility, but also reduced leukemia progression," said Cheung, whose study was published in the journal Leukemia.

Similar thinking had been applied previously to cancer in adults but the finding offered "an exciting new treatment angle for children," he said.

"To date, the main strategy for cancer therapy in children has focused on targeting malignant cells with chemotherapy, which is toxic for the leukemia cells but also toxic for the patient."

"Our finding that the cells surrounding the leukemia cells can contribute to treatment failure or success has led to a paradigm shift," Cheung said.

"It means this potentially could be a powerful adjuvant therapy. It's not going to replace chemotherapy, but we propose that using chemotherapy and treating the microenvironment at the same time will have more benefit than just the chemotherapy by itself."