The National Cancer Institute has tapped a team of scientists at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center to lead a $1.6 million in research program to improve lymphoma treatment, an area of excellence in research and care for the University of Rochester Medical Center.
The five-year grant to Steven H. Bernstein, M.D., co-director of Wilmot's lymphoma biology program, will investigate whether rituximab, an antibody treatment that has revolutionized treatment for lymphomas, elicits an anti-tumor immune response in patients to fight the disease.
Rituximab, also known as Rituxan, is effective in treating the disease, but doctors don't fully know the mechanisms for its success. Bernstein's team will study how rituximab affects the patients' tumor-fighting T-cells to verify the theory that the T-cells play a role in mediating the clinical effects of rituximab.
If scientists see such an immune response, it could improve doctors' understanding of rituximab's mechanism of action, and possibly change treatment regimens for people with follicular lymphoma. These results may also apply to similar antibody-based therapies of other cancers, leading to novel treatment strategies for cancer in general.