Hodgkin lymphoma really has been a very interesting disease over the last multiple decades, as we’ve understood the biology that’s allowed us to translate the biology into therapy. The focus of what I’ve been talking about has been the focus of taking the biology and applying it to treatment. And I think the key ways to think about that is if one thinks of the microenvironment in lymphoma as you think about specifically which cells are present around the Reed-Sternberg cells...
Hodgkin lymphoma really has been a very interesting disease over the last multiple decades, as we’ve understood the biology that’s allowed us to translate the biology into therapy. The focus of what I’ve been talking about has been the focus of taking the biology and applying it to treatment. And I think the key ways to think about that is if one thinks of the microenvironment in lymphoma as you think about specifically which cells are present around the Reed-Sternberg cells. We just need to remind ourselves that Reed-Sternberg cells are really a minority and a majority of cells in the microenvironment or other immune cells. There are a number of strategies for treatment, and the treatment is either to directly target the Reed-Sternberg cell, and that’s been done with chemotherapy in the past but more recently with antibody-drug conjugates such as brentuximab vedotin.
But more recently than that, we’ve understood that the microenvironment around the Reed-Sternberg cell, there are multiple cells present that we can utilize to target the tumor. One of those being affected T cells by using immune checkpoint blockade, and additionally, depleting our T reg cells, and agents such as Cami T have been able to actually, again, an antibody drug conjugate that would bind to a T reg cell and potentially deplete those. Macrophages are a further population of cells that are often quite prevalent in the microenvironment of Hodgkin lymphoma, often associated with a poor prognosis. But, when agents such as AFM13 bind to both macrophages and the Reed-Sternberg cell, that brings them into close proximity and allows for a kind of enhanced immune synapse and, again, efficacy, particularly when used in combination with PD-1 blockade. So all told, not only the tumor cell but the microenvironment, you’re providing a multiplicity of different immune and other targets for therapy, and this is translating into useful treatments for patients.