CLL Global Funded Research | How the Lymph Node Microenvironment May Influence CLL

Transcript:       

Dr. Alan Ramsay:      

My name is Dr. Alan Ramsay. I’m a professor at King’s College London. My connection with the CLL Global Research Foundation is they are very kindly funding a project grant, a research grant, for me to undertake novel studies in CLL and Richter’s transformations. This grant has just started this year, and I’m very excited to be running that and working with the foundation and all its supporters.

I’m a scientist, so non-clinical, but as a scientist, I have to do research in science that’s very connected and relevant for patient research, for the disease, for understanding how the disease works, and to develop new therapies for patients in the future. And the research that the foundation are supporting is really delving into an area which has been understudied to date. And I’m gonna call that the immune microenvironment.

So, diseases, like CLL, Richter’s transformation, develop, arise, progress in patient lymph nodes, as well as other organs. And I’m studying how immune cells are regulated in the lymph node tissues. And this is really important for immunity, for the health of the patient. It’s very important if the patient was ever to receive an immunotherapy, so the patients may be aware of RT cells or T cell bispecific antibodies.

These are immunotherapies that have potential for the conditions that we’re studying. And I’m trying to understand how they work and to optimize that. And to do that, I have to study the lymph node tissue environment.

It’s challenging, but my belief is that it can reveal very important information for improving therapy for patients.

Because CLL, Richter’s transformation develops, progresses in patient lymph nodes, we have to understand what happens. What does the cancer do to the lymph node tissue? And lymph nodes are the tissues that regulate, orchestrate our immune response. And we need that for health, for infection. But we also need our immune cells to be fighting back against the CLL and Richter’s transformation. And immunotherapy is now a way that we can treat patients to get the immune cells to start attacking and tackling resistant disease.

So, it’s very important to really understand how immune cells like T cells work. You have to study lymph node tissue. And during my presentation, I’ll go through this. It’s really the immunology of the cancer is what I work on. And I work on a particular cell type called fibroblasts that are there to support T cells, but in cancer, the fibroblasts are reprogrammed, if you like. We have to understand that, then design new ways to improve immune function for patients.

 The drugs that we have now is very encouraging. So, I call them targeted drugs. I’m sure the patients will be aware of that through the foundation. Also, the types of drugs that they will receive. So, they’re effective, but often they have to be given for a very long period. And unfortunately, for certain patients, the disease can relapse or become resistant. And that’s really where we have to think about doing research.

I’m studying the lymph node tissue in patients because that links to how T cells are regulated. And the reason why we need to do that is because immunotherapy offers an alternative treatment for patients that can give a real therapy option when the disease progresses or comes back. And that’s really, really important for CLL, for Richter’s, for all lymphomas, and indeed for all cancers. So, it’s very important that CLL, Richter’s, other lymphomas are researched and therapies are optimized just like for all other cancers.