NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Cancer Genetics and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have partnered to study genomic biomarkers in non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients and correlate those markers with clinical outcomes, CGI said today.
CGI said the collaborators will correlate markers to treatment outcomes in around 200 patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The company will incorporate any new markers validated in the study into a test to predict treatment outcomes for DLBCL patients.
Prognosis for DLBCL patients is difficult, and although a number of studies have discovered relationships between individual molecular markers and treatment outcomes the relationships between those markers has not been studied adequately or built into a comprehensive prognostic model, CGI said. CGI and BIDMC want to determine the relationship these markers have with each other and their collective impact on patient survival.
This cancer type accounts for around 40 percent of all B-cell malignancies; an estimated 190,000 people in the US are currently living with or in remission from DLBCL and roughly 20,000 new cases arise each year.
The partners hope the markers they study will help predict patient outcome, improve stratification, and make it possible to predict which patients have a good prognosis and which are likely to relapse. These tools would enable clinicians to use more personalized treatments that are based on a patient's risk, and help them monitor their patients.
CGI and BIDMC will study genomic rearrangements, mutations, and copy number changes using CGI's MatBA array, a commercially available laboratory-developed test that has been approved under CLIA and by New York State, Rutherford, NJ-based CGI said.
The mutation analysis will involve using next-generation sequencing on a panel of genes known to be altered in DLBCL. The partners will examine patient samples and assess the relationship of shared genetic variants to overall survival. Any genomic variants with prognostic value that are validated in this project, or which CGI has already validated, will be integrated into CGI's Complete program for DLBCL.