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IBC 2025 | Understanding the functional characterization of follicular lymphoma CPCs
Sandrine Roulland, PharmD, PhD, Center for Immunology of Marseille-Luminy (CIML), Marseille, France, discusses the functional characterization of follicular lymphoma clonal precursor cells (CPCs). Dr Roulland highlights a clinical trial where CPCs were identified after treatment, and a novel signature was defined, revealing specific markers that can be targeted. This research aims to prevent disease relapses by targeting CPCs and their microenvironment, with the goal of eradicating these cells and preventing future relapses. This interview took place at the 3rd Intercepting Blood Cancers (IBC) Workshop held in Nice, France.
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Transcript
My presentation was about trying to understand better the functional characterization of the follicular lymphoma clonal precursor cells. So those cells are the ones that give rise to the disease and they are present very early on in healthy individuals. We know that some of those cells are able to progress into follicular lymphoma. So it’s very interesting when we think about the interception of that disease to characterize at the genetic level but also at the functional level those CPC...
My presentation was about trying to understand better the functional characterization of the follicular lymphoma clonal precursor cells. So those cells are the ones that give rise to the disease and they are present very early on in healthy individuals. We know that some of those cells are able to progress into follicular lymphoma. So it’s very interesting when we think about the interception of that disease to characterize at the genetic level but also at the functional level those CPC. And also we know that those CPC are likely at the origin of the relapse, and so if we want to avoid and prevent relapses, we need to characterize them. And so I presented yesterday a story that we conducted on a clinical trial where we were able to get access to samples at the diagnosis of the patient and after treatment. And after treatment, we believe, when they are cured or at least they are in remission, we believe that we can have access to an enriched population of eventual drug persisters and cancer precursor cells. And so we used fancy tools that are based on single-cell transcriptomics that allow you to analyze very rare populations and to analyze the transcriptome of those cells and to characterize them. And we got access to the CPC after therapy and we defined a novel signature of the CPC, and it seems that the signatures that we have have some specific markers that can be targeted. And so if we are able to propose some early clinical trials in order to target specifically those CPC, we may, in the future, of course, prevent the disease relapses. And so this is really where we are right now, characterizing better the follicular lymphoma precursor cells and trying to find ways to target them. In addition, what we have done, we are working on the B-cells, but we are also working on the microenvironment and characterizing the microenvironment that sustains those persister cells. So we have defined some characterization of the microenvironment, and we think that by targeting the crosstalk between the tumor and the CPC and the tumor microenvironment that sustains those cells, we can also find ways to eradicate those CPC and prevent relapses.
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