Development and characterization of a novel CAR T-cell therapy for NHL

Non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) are a group of blood cancers characterized by the expansion of malignant B lymphocytes creating tumors throughout the body. The standard of care for patients with aggressive NHL is a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Even though it is well tolerated, ~40% of the patients respond poorly and eventually relapse.

Novel personalized treatment options are now available for such individuals and engage patients own T cells genetically manipulated to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) capable to recognize and attack malignant cells.

Thus far, CAR-T products recognizing and attacking cells expressing the protein CD19 have been approved by regulatory agencies across the planet.

However, long-term follow-up studies show that more than half of these patients eventually succumb to relapse after CAR-T treatment. One of the causes for this is the loss of the CD19 protein on NHL cells. Therefore, finding other proteins beyond CD19 that could be targeted or co-targeted with CAR-T-cells is desired.

Indeed, in the proposed project, I intend to develop and characterize a CAR-T therapy directed against a cell surface protein highly expressed in NHL (preliminary data).

Herein, I plan to evaluate the levels of the new target protein in a large cohort of NHL patients using immunohistochemistry and to perform a thorough preclinical assessment of this novel CAR-T-cell approach using cutting-edge preclinical NHL models.

To achieve these goals, I will exploit the experience of the hosting institution in generating NHL patient-derived xenografts and in the bench-to-bedside CAR-T development process, as well as the external collaborators who are experts in blood cancer treatment.This fellowship will significantly expose me to world-class theoretical and hands-on preclinical research in hematooncology and adoptive cell therapy, thus boosting my career as an independent researcher.