Novel therapeutic platform for aggressive lymphoma: NanoLymphoma (NanoLymphoma)

Immunotherapy using antibodies targeting the cell surface has led to important clinical advances in patients with cancer, exemplified by CD20-antibodies that are first-line treatment in patients with B-cell lymphoma.

However, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common and aggressive form of B-cell lymphoma worldwide, is still incurable in 40% of patients.

These patients have poor prognosis due to treatment failure or relapse upon therapy with CD20-antibodies (260,000 mortalities worldwide in 2020).

Thus, there is urgent need for novel therapies to overcome resistance and enhance anti-tumor activities in patients with aggressive B-cell lymphoma.

We developed nanofilaments that can efficiently cluster multiple lymphoma membrane targets (CD20, and new targets: CD22, CD37) to induce potent tumor cytotoxicity.

This new therapeutic platform (''NanoLymphoma'') represents a powerful strategy since this approach is independent from genetic cancer subtypes and is broadly applicable in molecular heterogeneous B-cell lymphoma subtypes.

NanoLymphoma will evaluate and validate the technical and commercial feasibility of its new therapeutic platform to target human lymphoma cells and prepare for clinical translation to patients with DLBCL.

NanoLymphoma will: 1) Show that clustering of therapeutic targets on the surface tumor cells potently induces tumor cell death, and 2) Perform market and business case analyses to ensure commercial feasibility and entry to market through Simmunext Biotherapeutics. NanoLymphoma is expected to outperform conventional anti-CD20 antibody treatment in patients with aggressive lymphoma.