Lymphoma

Swapping just a single amino acid can play a decisive role in transforming healthy B cells into cancer cells. An international team led by ECRC researcher Stephan Mathas describes in “Nature Communications” how a point mutation in the transcription factor IRF4 profoundly alters gene regulation.

Armin Rehm and Uta Höpken want to improve our immune defenses against cancer. They have recently shown in human cells what was previously only possible in mouse models. Their findings, published in "Molecular Therapy", have raised the chances of a highly effective immunotherapy being developed for blood cancer.

A team led by Professor Ulrich Keller studied genes which are altered in people with lymphoma and identified a key mechanism involved in disease development. This signaling pathway controls the repair of DNA damage, they report in “Nature Communications”.

Cellular immunotherapies have so far been only partially effective against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A team led by Armin Rehm of the MDC has discovered a possible reason. As they describe in “Cell Reports”, this cancer induces changes in the large blood vessels through which immune cells normally migrate to the lymph nodes.

Every year, some 510,000 people in Germany are diagnosed with cancer – and there are over four million people in the country today living with a cancer diagnosis. On the occasion of World Cancer Day on February 4, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) is giving media representatives an opportunity to hear from experts on the current state of cancer research.

MDC researchers have developed a new approach to CAR T-cell therapy. The team has shown in Nature Communications that the procedure is very effective, especially when it comes to fighting follicular lymphomas and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common type of blood cancer in adults.

Certain immune system cells are able to make tumors especially visible to the body’s own defenses – if only cancer cells didn’t prevent them from doing so. Researchers, including those from the MDC and ECRC, have now published a joint article in PNAS explaining how tumors block the immune cells in their immediate environment.

Researchers at the MDC observe the very early stages of blood vessel development in lymph node tumors. The findings published in Cancer Research suggest a potential treatment target to slow lymphoma tumor growth.

Although classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma is generally easily treatable today, many aspects of the disease still remain a mystery. A team at the MDC led by Professor Claus Scheidereit has now identified an important signaling molecule in the biology of this lymphoma: LTA.

Instead of defending the body against lymphoma, special immune cells sometimes have the opposite effect. The cancer reprograms the dendritic cells to promote lymphoma tumor growth.