Patients with some types of lymphoma that become resistant to standard treatments may benefit from a therapy that University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers are evaluating after they discovered a key process that fuels the blood cancers' resistance to current drugs. Here are the details:
An effective treatment, until it isn't: The UW–Madison team sought to understand why some patients with certain non-Hodgkin's lymphomas that originate in white blood cells called B cells develop resistance to drugs that have become a standard of care for the disease.
Identifying a new mechanism of resistance: Researchers have been trying to understand why and how BTK inhibitors often stop being effective, and Rui and his colleagues investigated resistance against ibrutinib specifically.
Overcoming relapse: Figuring out how cancerous B cells gain resistance to BTK inhibitors like ibrutinib was only part of the goal of the UW–Madison team, which is ultimately seeking new effective treatments for lymphoma patients who have relapsed thanks to drug resistance.
In the same study, Rui and his colleagues tested a new treatment regimen aimed at counteracting the overactivity of EGR1.
The team landed on an experimental treatment involving two drugs that lower cells' metabolisms: metformin, which is used to treat Type 2 diabetes, and a newer drug called IM156.
In combination, these two drugs effectively slowed the growth of ibrutinib-resistant lymphoma cells in mouse models with drug-resistant B-cell lymphomas.
Eventually, Rui is hopeful the experimental treatment can make its way to clinical trials with human patients. "I always want findings from my lab translated to the clinic," Rui says. "If patients can benefit from this research, that would be very rewarding."
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison
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