A research study led by the University of Kansas suggests that the FDA-mandated monitoring period of diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients receiving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy could be halved without harm to patients. Writing in the journal Blood Advances, first author Nausheen Ahmed, a researcher and hematologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and colleagues report that side effects from the therapy such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) or immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS) are very rare in patients with this type of ..read more

A second patient with HIV has been cured with a stem cell transplant at Charité – Berlin University Medicine. In 2008, the “Berlin Patient” became the first person in the world to be cured of HIV, by such a transplant. In both cases the patients were being treated for blood cancers using stem cell transplants and the researchers specially selected the donors. HIV is typically incurable. After transplant, the current patient has had no detectable virus for more than five years even though he is not taking antiviral medications. The first Berlin patient received stem cells from a donor who was h ..read more

Patients with chronic lymphoblastic leukemia (CLL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) were less likely to experience severe infection if they received frequent testing for immunoglobulin G (IgG)—proteins in the immune system that are at low levels in patients with these blood cancers. The new research, published today in the journal Blood Advances, showed immunoglobulin replacement therapy (IgRT) reduced both recurrent infections and severe infections in patients enrolled in the study and could possibly save patients’ lives. Currently roughly half of all CCL patients and one-third of NHL patients ..read more

Researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) have developed a chemotherapy-free, targeted treatment regimen that leads to durable remissions in people with certain types of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The five-drug ViPOR regimen, named for its inclusion of venetoclax, ibrutinib, prednisone, obinutuzumab, and lenalidomide, synergistically targets multiple molecular pathways that are essential for DLBCL survival. “This regimen was based on our previous work targeting DLBCL with ibrutinib,” first author and study co-lead Christopher Melani of NCI’s Center for Cancer Resear ..read more

Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine have shown that although the risk for secondary T-cell lymphoma is low after CAR T cell therapy, it is not nonexistent, and clinicians should be aware that patients may be susceptible to this outcome. CAR T cell therapy is an effective treatment for hematologic cancers that uses a patient’s own genetically modified T cells. The cells are modified to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) gene that is engineered to code for a transmembrane protein with extracellular antigen recognition and intracellular T cell–activating domains th ..read more

Gigi Chambers has had a lot to contend with as a patient—she’s beaten cancer twice, including stage IV Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and then twenty years later was diagnosed with heart failure and received a transplant. But nothing has been more dreadful and uncomfortable than the post-transplant heart biopsies checking for graft rejection. It’s gotten so bad that Gigi began to take anti-anxiety medication every time she had a biopsy. Fortunately for Gigi, Kiran Kaur Khush, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford University, was developing and testing a new, noninvasive molecular diagnostic from CareDx a ..read more

A team of researchers at the Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECCC) have demonstrated that altering two of the four key proteins in chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) improved their ability to attack and shrink glioblastoma, pancreatic, and lung tumors in mouse models of these cancers. The new approach, reported in Science Advances, has the potential for this form of immunotherapy, already highly successful in treating blood cancer, to become an effective tool against solid tumors. “CAR-T cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers such as leukemia and lympho ..read more

Scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a technique for boosting T cells’ ability to recognize and kill solid tumor cells. By removing a sugar present on the exterior of solid tumor cancer cells, T cells can move closer to their target. Studies in mice showed that the enhanced proximity of the T cell to its cancer cell target improved T-cell mediated killing of cancer cells. Their results are reported in Nature Biomedical Engineering. “We wanted to find a way to overcome the immune suppressive tumor microenvironment to treat solid tumors which normally do not respond well to immunothera ..read more

As it expands from oncology into autoimmune disease, Cullinan Therapeutics (formerly Cullinan Oncology) yesterday announced a $280 million private placement. The company’s lead compound is now CLN-978 for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), which it believes has the potential to be a safe, first-in-class, off-the-shelf, disease-modifying treatment in autoimmune diseases.  “Today’s announcements represent a major step forward for Cullinan Therapeutics…we believe that CLN-978 could offer a convenient modality and potentially disease-modifying treatment for patients with autoimmune diseases ..read more

One of the largest studies to date shows AI-assisted image analysis can detect 90% of cases of lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system. The Scandinavian study used a model called Lars, (Lymphoma Artificial Reader System)—a deep learning system based on artificial intelligence.   Lymphoma is one of the most common cancers in the United States, accounting for about 4% of all cancers. All subjects in this study were current or former lymphoma patients, diagnosed histologically. “We used former patients with negative follow-up scans as our negative cases, i.e. former lymphoma patients ..read more