Projects

Lymphoma Epidemiology of Outcomes (LEO) Cohort

The goal of the LEO study is to build and maintain a large and diverse cohort of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) patients to support a broad research agenda aimed at identifying new clinical, epidemiologic, genetic, tumor, and treatment factors that influence outcome and the overall survivorship experience.

Once enrolled into LEO, participants complete questionnaires on their health history, lifestyle, quality of life and other factors. The LEO study team collects clinical, pathology and treatment data from medical records. Participants also provide a blood sample, which is processed and stored as DNA, plasma and serum in the LEO biorepository. LEO study pathologists review and classify diagnostic tumor tissue, some of which is stored in the LEO biorepository. The LEO team then follows all participants over time to collect updated medical and lifestyle data, quality of life, new treatments, and disease outcomes.

This research is funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute (U01 CA195568).

Hodgkin Lymphoma International Study for Individual Care (HoLISTIC Consortium)

HoLISTIC (Hodgkin Lymphoma International Study for Individual Care) is an international consortiuma team of diverse experts from around the world. The goal is to study the salient aspects of Hodgkin lymphoma prognosis, epidemiology, treatment, survivorship and health outcomes across all age groups. The consortium consists of 70+ investigators, patients and representatives from the lymphoma advocacy community. Investigators include pediatric and adult oncologists, radiation oncologists, nuclear medicine and PET imaging experts, biology scientists, decision-making scientists, cancer statisticians, and cancer epidemiologists.

The goal of the study is to enhance decision support and promote personalized medicine for Hodgkin lymphoma patients across all disease states and stages, given expanding treatment options, and in the absence of complete acute and long-term data.

To learn more about the study, visit the HoLISTIC Consortium website. This research is funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute (R01 CA262265).

Improving outcomes after diagnosis in follicular lymphoma

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is a heterogeneous disease characterized by episodes of relapse and transformation. Prognostic models exist that can be applied at diagnosis to predict how the disease will progress and what treatment options are appropriate for individual patients.

Using data from the Lymphoma Epidemiology of Outcomes (LEO) Cohort, we will develop new, predictive models that can be applied at the time of relapse to help distinguish patients who will respond well to standard therapy from those with high-risk disease who may require novel treatment approaches. We also will evaluate the impact of transformation to aggressive lymphoma and identify predictors of outcome after transformation. Finally, we will perform focus groups and a discrete choice experiment in patients living with follicular lymphoma to better understand what features of treatment, including how we deliver therapy and measure outcomes to therapy, matter most to patients.

This research is funded by a grant from the Lymphoma Research Foundation.

Evaluation of surrogate endpoints in clinical trials for newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL)

DLBCL is the most common type of aggressive lymphoma. Progression-free survival (PFS) is an established regulatory primary endpoint for phase 3 studies in frontline DLBCL and has been demonstrated to be a surrogate endpoint to overall survival. However, PFS requires a period of follow-up to capture sufficient events needed to evaluate the endpoint. An evaluation that can accurately identify active disease at completion of planned therapy has clinical relevance as well as potential utility as a surrogate endpoint for frontline trials. In this study we will evaluate PET-CR at end of therapy as a surrogate endpoint for regulatory use in clinical trials of newly diagnosed DLBCL.

This research is funded by a grant from Roche/Genentech and Bristol Myers Squibb.