NEW YORK – City of Hope and the Institute for Follicular Lymphoma Innovation (IFLI) said Tuesday that they are collaborating to study the tumor microenvironment and its relationship to spontaneous remission in patients with follicular lymphoma.
The three-year project, funded with $2 million from IFLI, will be led by City of Hope associate professor Raju Pillai, and Steven Rosen, director emeritus of City of Hope’s comprehensive cancer center and distinguished chair of the center's hematologic malignancies program.
According to Pillai, the spectrum of follicular lymphoma outcomes, which ranges from spontaneous remission to highly aggressive disease, is already known to be influenced by the immune microenvironment. "With IFLI’s support, we can [use] City of Hope’s omics and spatial biology expertise to shed more light on why and how spontaneous remission occurs, with the goal that our discoveries will translate to advances in diagnostics and the next generation of therapies for patients," he said in a statement.
In the study, City of Hope will analyze patient samples from individuals with follicular lymphoma who have or have not spontaneously gone into remission. The technologies used will include spatial proteomics and transcriptomics, as well as machine learning techniques to help identify potential prognostic factors or signatures.