Can CAR-T treatment be improved so that more patients remain in long-term remission after therapy?
This four-year study is being conducted by Dr. Marco Ruella, MD (University of Pennsylvania), and Dr. Wendy Béguelin, PhD (Weill Cornell Medicine). They are collaborating with researchers Dr. Patrizia Porazzi, Raymone Pajarillo, Dr. Linhui Chen and Dr. Ioannis Karagiannidis. This team of experts focuses on making CAR-T cell therapy more effective for patients with non-Hodgkin lymphomas, such as diffuse large cell B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and follicular lymphoma (FL).
For this research, the team will receive a grant of €1,000,000 for four years.
Thanks to new treatments, such as immunotherapy with CAR T cells, patients with Non-Hodgin lymphomas have new hope. Unfortunately, in only 40% of patients who receive this therapy, the cancer remains completely gone. Research by Dr. Marco Ruella’s group is now focused on improving these treatments so that they become more effective and safer.
This research aims to improve treatment by improving the interaction between CAR-T cells and tumor cells. It also looks to see if the environment around the tumor can be changed to allow CAR-T cells to reach the tumor better and thus fight the tumor more effectively.
“We are working on new ways to improve treatments for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a type of cancer that affects the immune system. One promising treatment for NHL is CAR T-cell therapy, which uses the patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer. However, this treatment only works in the long term for about 40% of patients, so we need to make it more effective.
Our research focuses on a specific protein, EZH2, that helps lymphoma cells survive. We found that blocking EZH2 can help the immune system, especially CAR T cells, attack the cancer more successfully.
Our goal is to:
- Making tumors more vulnerable to CAR T cells so that treatment works better.
- Changing the tumor’s environment to make it easier for CAR T cells to reach and destroy cancer cells.
By understanding how EZH2 inhibition affects both the cancer and the immune system, we hope to make CAR T-cell therapy more successful for more patients. This could lead to better treatments for lymphoma and may also help improve other cancer immunotherapies in the future.”
Expected outcomes of the research:
More patients long-term disease-free with CAR-T cell therapy.
Develop new treatment methods that target not only the tumor and CAR-T cells, but also the tumor’s environment
Gain insights that may also be applicable to other types of cancer and immunotherapies.
Funded by Lymph&Co
With a €1 million grant, funded by your donations, we are taking steps to develop new treatments that improve survival and quality of life for patients with recurrent or difficult-to-treat lymphomas.
Lymph&Co remains committed to funding innovative research that paves the way to better treatments and ultimately cures.
About one in 50 people will be diagnosed with lymphoma during his or her lifetime. More than 4,000 new patients are diagnosed each year in the Netherlands alone, and this number is increasing.
