A Blog from the Lymphoma Program at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian
Author: lymphomaprogram
Located on the Upper East Side of New York City, the Lymphoma Program at Weill Cornell Medical College/NewYork Presbyterian Hospital is internationally recognized for our efforts to enable patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin disease and related disorders to have the best possible clinical outcome, including cure when possible.
In this video from OncLive, Dr. Peter Martin discusses potential changes in the future treatment of younger patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), as well as new lines of therapy currently being developed for all patients with MCL. These new therapies include Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitors, PI3 kinase inhibitors, Bcl-2 inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs, and immunotherapy agents.
In the Lymphoma Program our patient care is informed by our clinical research. A full listing of available trials for MCL can be found on our clinical trials website.
While ibrutinib represents undeniable progress in the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma, the outcomes and ideal management of patients that experience ibrutinib failure are unclear. In a study recently published in Blood, Dr. Peter Martin discusses findings from a recent observational study from 15 sites on patients who experienced lymphoma progression while receiving ibrutinib.
Previous #REDLAMP entries can be viewed on our Youtube channel.
We encourage you to follow the Lymphoma Program on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook where we will highlight new videos are about research publications as they are released. We also welcome your feedback, suggestions and questions about this project. If you have other questions about our lymphoma program or clinical trials or would like to see one of our lymphoma specialists, please contact us at 212-746-2919.
In a study published in February 2016 in Blood, researchers from Leandro Cerchietti’s lab at Weill Cornell Medicine in collaboration with the University of Montreal identified a potential new strategy for the treatment of aggressive diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL) called double and triple hit lymphomas.
What are double and triple hit lymphomas and why they are they so difficult to treat?
Double and triple hit lymphomas have chromosomal changes in two or three genes (MYC, BCL2, and/or BCL6) which encode for proteins that have a primary role in cell growth and contribute to the development of cancer. Chemotherapy does not work well to kill these types of lymphomas. Further, patients with double and triple hit lymphomas are often older and have difficulty tolerating aggressive chemotherapy. Therefore it is essential for new, targeted therapies to be developed that are less toxic for these patients.
What did researchers find?
The researchers found that the combination of an FDA-approved antiviral medication called ribavirin and a new targeted medication called an Hsp90 inhibitor work together to kill double and triple hit lymphomas in preclinical models. Ribavirin blocks the function of a protein called eIF4E. With the inhibition of Hsp90 and eIF4E, the proteins MYC, BCL2, and BCL6 are less effective in promoting growth of lymphoma cells. The addition of ribavirin also may prevent developing resistance to treatment with the Hsp90 inhibitor.
What do these findings mean for patients?
The lymphoma group at Weill Cornell Medicine is developing a phase I clinical trial to determine the optimal dose of an Hsp90 inhibitor and ribavirin for patients with aggressive DLBCLs that do not respond or return after initial therapy. We will evaluate tumor and blood samples before and after treatment with this combination to confirm that it negatively impacts MYC, BCL2, and BCL6 as expected. This is a promising treatment strategy in these patients and expected to be much better tolerated than chemotherapy.
Stay tuned for future updates regarding treatments for double and triple hit lymphomas at Weill Cornell.
New Developments in Lymphoma 