Clemens Schmitt, MD, PhD, from the Berlin School of Integrative Oncology, Berlin, Germany, gives an overview of the session he chaired, ‘Restore and target: a conceptually novel treatment approach to classical Hodgkin lymphoma’ at the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) 2017 in Lugano, Switzerland. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is typically a very treatable disease, however, in patients with primary refractory or relapsed disease, the outcome is not as good, therefore novel approaches need to be developed. Hodgkin lymphoma cells present with a transdifferentiated phenotype, lacking multiple components of a typical B-cell. This has lead to the question of whether restoring lymphoma cells to a B-cell phenotype would be therapeutic. Based on a CD-19 promotor luciferase reporter, CD-19 transcription was elicited, resulting in CD-19 and CD-20 expression. Arsenic trioxide and all-trans retinoic acid have also been shown to restore the B-cell phenotype. This has resulted in the formulation of the hypothesis that other treatments, such as rituximab and idelalisib may be effective in treating the restored B-cells. He states that there is the potential for this to be combined with, and perhaps even replace, chemotherapy in the future.
