Lymphoma Program News – Page 14 – New Developments in Lymphoma

The Meyer Cancer Center recently profiled Dr. Lisa Roth and the far-reaching impact of her work in finding new targeted therapies to treat young patients with Burkitt lymphoma. Burkitt’s is an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that is often fatal. Finding alternative therapy options is important because,

“As many as 85 percent of children with Burkitt lymphoma respond well to treatment. Their tumors grow incredibly fast – doubling in size in a matter of days – but also shrink incredibly fast when blasted with high-dose chemotherapy. In order to ensure the tumors don’t return, they undergo intensive sustained treatment that generally lasts from 4-8 months.”

“For those who don’t respond, however, or for those whose disease returns despite the treatment, the survival rate is below 20 percent. And success is often tempered by immediate and long-term side effects, including cardiovascular problems, infertility and secondary malignancies.”

“We do very well, curing the majority of patients; the problem is the amount of chemotherapy needed to get to that cure rate is substantial,” Roth said. “As our patients are surviving longer and longer, we are beginning to see the toll the treatments are taking long-term.”

To this end Dr. Roth has received funding from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation to investigate PU-H71 a promising new therapy which kills Burkitt lymphoma cells by attacking a protein required for suvival.

Besides her work in finding new options to treat Burkitt lymphoma, Dr. Roth is building an adolescent and young adult lymphoma program at Weill Cornell Medicine. The program will focus on the needs of patients who don’t squarely fit into either the pediatric or adult categories for treatment. It will also specifically address the needs of young adult patients like fertility.

Look to this space for more information about the adolescent and young adult lymphoma program at Weill Cornell Medicine.

If you are interested in making an appointment with Dr. Roth and the adolescent and young adults lymphoma program you can call her at 646-962-2068

2015 has been another productive year for research in the Lymphoma Program at Weill Cornell Medicine. Listed below are the abstracts we were involved in whole or in part to be presented at this year’s 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in December.

Look to this space for future updates about lymphoma related developments from ASH 2015.

B-cell Lymphomas

434 – A Chromatin Reader That Acts As a Key to Lock in and Coordinate Recruitment of Transcription Factors and a Novel Polycomb Complex to Bivalent Chromatin Thus Driving Formation of Germinal Centers and B-Cell Lymphomas

2427 – Transcriptome Sequencing Reveals Thousands of Novel Long Non-Coding RNAs in B-Cell Lymphoma

2756 – Scavenger Receptor Type B1 Is Essential for High Density Lipoprotein Nanoparticle Induced B-Cell Lymphoma Cell Death

Burkitt ’s lymphoma

592 – Targeting the Hsp90 Oncoproteome in Burkitt Lymphoma

CLL/SLL

831 – The Bruton Tyrosine Kinase (Btk) Inhibitor ACP-196: Marked Activity in Relapsed/Refractory CLL with a Favorable Safety Profile

833 – Outcome of Ibrutinib Treatment by Baseline Genetic Features in Patients with Relapsed or Refractory CLL/SLL with del17p in the Resonate-17 Study

1728 – SLAMF1/CD150 Activates Autophagy in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Cells, Modulating Chemotaxis and Responses to Therapy

2952 – Patterns of Lymphocytosis in Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) or Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma (SLL) Treated with Idelalisib