On August 3, 2021 BostonGene Corporation, a biomedical software company committed to defining optimal precision medicine-based therapies for cancer patients, reported a publication in Blood Cancer Journal, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on hematologic malignancies and related disorders (Press release, BostonGene, AUG 3, 2021, View Source [SID1234585644]). The manuscript "Lack of intrafollicular memory CD4+ T cells is predictive of early clinical failure in newly diagnosed follicular lymphoma" underscores the role of intrafollicular CD4 expression to independently predict treatment outcomes of high-risk follicular lymphoma (FL) patients.
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"We’re proud to support Mayo Clinic in its mission to predict treatment outcomes for patients with newly diagnosed follicular lymphoma"
Early event-free status (EFS) at 12 and 24 months are good indicators of subsequent prolonged survival and lengthy life expectancy in FL. However, an unmet need remains to predict early EFS at diagnosis to better treat patients with optimal therapeutics. This discovery and validation study evaluated the tumor microenvironment (TME) determinants of early failure in patients with newly diagnosed FL and integrated the results into the Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index (FLIPI), the clinically-driven scoring system of survival in FL. This research study analyzed the prevalence of T-cell subsets and macrophages in the pretreatment biopsy specimens of newly diagnosed patients with FL who were prospectively enrolled in the Molecular Epidemiology Resource (MER) cohort at Mayo Clinic and the University of Iowa. To support this work, BostonGene conducted comprehensive analysis of Co-Detection by Indexing (CODEX) multiplex immunofluorescence data generated by the Villasboas Lab at Mayo Clinic to characterize intratumoral immunophenotypes. The study revealed that insufficient intrafollicular CD4 expression was the main predictor of early failure, leading to the development of a novel bio-clinical risk model (called BioFLIPI), where lack of CD4 intrafollicular expression moved patients up one FLIPI risk group, ultimately improving the identification of patients at risk for early failure at diagnosis.
"Leveraging BostonGene’s analytical capacity to explore the ultrahigh plex CODEX imaging datasets generated in our laboratory furthered our understanding of the composition and spatial distribution of immune cells within the TME," said J. C. Villasboas, MD at Mayo Clinic. "These key insights are critical to improving clinical outcomes for FL patients."
This work is the result of the research collaboration between Mayo Clinic and BostonGene to uncover key tumor characteristics that can be exploited to develop personalized therapies for lymphoma patients.
"We’re proud to support Mayo Clinic in its mission to predict treatment outcomes for patients with newly diagnosed follicular lymphoma," said Nathan Fowler, MD, Chief Medical Officer at BostonGene. "With our combined transformational technologies, we have a significant opportunity to identify patients with the highest risk of early failure and personalize treatment."