The importance of the immune system on the response to the treatment of cancer is increasingly recognized. Moreover, the immune system is relevant for the response to immune therapies and in the case of chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T) cells, the immune system is the starting material for these manufactured cells.
While it has been well recognized that chemotherapy and other cancer treatments can cause defects in the immune system, little is known on how these immune defects affect the outcomes of cancer and the specific changes in immune cells.
This proposal seeks to investigate the specific changes in the immune system that occur in patients who have the most frequent form of lymphoma. We will evaluate the characteristics of immune cells when patients are diagnosed and then during and after the initial treatment.
We will also investigate the differences in the immune cells of patients treated with CAR-T cells both before and after they receive this cellular treatment. We seek to find was to predict who will respond to these treatments based on the characteristics of their immune cells and also to find ways to modify the immune system to increase the chances to respond to these new cellular therapies.
Our studies aim to increase our understanding of the immune system of patients with diagnosed with lymphoma, and our findings can help improve the chances to respond to new immunotherapies for patients with lymphoma and other cancers.
100% For The Cure
