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Cellular Therapies Leading to New Treatment Options for Lymphoma Patients

As part of his work with a new CAR T-cell consortium, Matthew Cortese, MD, MPH, a hematologic oncologist at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, shares that certain types of hard-to-treat lymphomas may be more receptive to immunotherapies than previously thought.

“We’ve been able to show for the first time that certain types of lymphoma, including transform follicular lymphoma, Richter transformation, transform marginal zone lymphoma and B cell lymphomas, do extremely well with cell therapy,” he says.

For one patient, the introduction of venetoclax, a small molecule that has been shown to help repair a damaged immune system in as little as 30 days in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, allowed him to successfully provide relief from her hyper-progressive lymphoma. “She was recommended to seek hospice, but we were able to turn her around and give her more time,” Dr. Cortese says. “We were able to treat and arrest her disease progression, get her infection under control and she was able to meet her great-granddaughter. We got her over a year (of more time). That led to the development of my Richter transformation study, which has been greenlit by the FDA.”

Dr. Cortese and his team at Roswell Park also continue to work on trials to boost treatment efficacy while minimizing toxicity by considering different treatment sequences to create more durable remissions. He’s also working across disease types on research into complement biology, where he’s had promising results in ovarian cancer patients.

“We’re trying to mitigate the risk of neurotoxicity from cell therapy as well as building relationships with industry partners and patients and stakeholders in the community to develop novel trial approaches to make toxicity less and efficacy more,” he says.


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Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

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Matthew Cortese, MD, MPH

Matthew Cortese, MD, MPH

Medical Oncology and Hematology

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