Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Funds $46 Million in New Research

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has committed an additional $46 million to fund the science at medical institutions around the world. LLS has invested more than $1 billion in cancer research in its nearly 70-year history.

Beat AML Master Trial, a multi-center, multi-drug clinical trial in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), LLS will now fund 23 new grants for this targeted approach to finding the right drug for the right patient at the right time. Additionally, to advance the revolutionary therapies that harness the body's own immune system to fight cancer, LLS will fund 17 new immunotherapy projects.

These new grants bring LLS's total active research portfolio to 254 grants, more investment in blood cancer research than any non-profit agency or government agency outside of the National Institutes of Health.

"There is never a good time to get cancer, but it's a phenomenal time to be fighting it. LLS is doing more than any cancer non-profit to advance the next generation of blood cancer treatments and cures, and, in doing so, we are helping patients with other cancers and chronic diseases," Louis J. DeGennaro, Ph.D., LLS's president and CEO said. "Already in 2017, the FDA has approved 13 new blood cancer treatments or new indications, and LLS has supported virtually all of them. Our long-term vision and investment is paying off in our impact for patients."

As part of its research agenda, LLS continues to invest approximately $10 million annually in its venture philanthropy initiative, TAP, or Therapy Acceleration Program, through which the organization partners with biotechnology companies to accelerate development of novel therapies through clinical trials. In 2017, LLS saw two of its partnerships result in FDA approvals – one for the revolutionary chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy approach for patients with relapsed large B-cell lymphoma and the other for a novel combination therapy for AML patients. Another TAP project, a therapy for patients with a rare blood cancer called blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm, is poised for FDA review in coming months after showing positive high response rates in clinical trials. Since its inception in 2007, the TAP program has accelerated dozens of projects from preclinical work into clinical trials where the therapies are being tested in patients.

The most ambitious grants in the LLS portfolio are the Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) – these multidisciplinary, collaborative grants bring together teams of researchers to solve difficult challenges in the blood cancers. This year, LLS awarded three five-year SCORs:

Stephen Nimer, MD, University of Miami. Epigenetics are small chemical changes that regulate gene behavior. Nimer and his team are studying how to target epigenetic abnormalities in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

Robert Orlowski, MD, Ph.D., University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. While we've seen many new therapies for myeloma approved in recent years, it is still an incurable blood cancer. Orlowski and his team are developing immunotherapeutic approaches to prevent precursor diseases from progressing to full-blown myeloma and targeted approaches to treat patients with high-risk subtypes of myeloma.

Andreas Strasser, Ph.D., MSc, FAA, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. This new SCOR paves the way for therapeutics that harness the body's own cell death machinery, called apoptosis, the normal process that causes impaired cells to self-destruct. When the process goes awry, cancer cells do not die as readily. The team was instrumental in the discovery of the first approved apoptosis-targeted agent called venetoclax (Venclexta) for use in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The team is now testing multiple new approaches to boost apoptosis in other leukemias, as well as lymphoma and myeloma.

History was made over the past three months with the approval of two LLS-supported CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell immunotherapies, a game-changing approach to therapy that involves reprogramming the patient's own immune cells to find and kill cancer cells. Both of these programs were the first to validate CAR-T, which is now being aggressively expanded in solid tumors. LLS has invested $40 million over the past two decades in CAR T-cell therapy at multiple institutions. Currently, LLS is committed to funding $34 million in CAR T-cell and other immunotherapies.

LLS's latest round of grants is focused on supporting the next generation of CAR T-cell and other immunotherapy approaches, making them safer, more effective for more patients, and easier to produce. New projects include:

Eric Smith, MD, Ph.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, received a Special Fellow Award, funding to help scientists earlier in their careers, to optimize CAR T-cell therapy for patients with multiple myeloma.

Another Special Fellow awardee is Shannon Oda, Ph.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who is working on ways to enhance T-cell immunotherapy for AML by studying ways to overcome the obstacles that make some patients resistant to the treatment.

Barbara Savoldo, MD, Ph.D, University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been awarded a Translational Research Program grant to support her team's efforts to reduce these potentially lethal side effects – including cytokine release syndrome. The team is developing a "safety switch" that can halt the expansion of the T cells once infused into the patients in cases of severe toxicities.

LLS is putting additional resources toward this challenging blood cancer this year. In addition to the previously mentioned SCOR led by Orlowski, LLS is funding other exciting new work in myeloma. Several researchers are focusing on what makes myeloma patients relapse or resistant to therapy.

Researchers have theorized that most myeloma patients eventually relapse from treatment because the myeloma stem cells persist even after treatment. Fenghuang Zhan, MD, Ph.D. University of Iowa, and his team are studying the role of the CD24 gene, which is more abundant in myeloma stem cells, in the hopes of finding approaches which may prevent relapse.

Fotis Asimakopoulos, MB BChir, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin System, who received a Translational Research Program grant, is focused on understanding the defenses cancer cells employ to resist treatment, with the long term goal of enhancing the ability of immunotherapy-mobilized killer cells to do their job.

One year ago, LLS launched its Beat AML Master Trial, a clinical trial that is taking a precision medicine approach by identifying the patient's AML subtype and giving them a targeted therapy best suited to their diagnosis. In addition to this trial, LLS continues to invest in other novel approaches to treat AML in this latest round of grants. These include:

Timothy Ley, MD, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is investigating using genomic technology to identify genetic markers which may tell us which AML patients are more likely to relapse and whether performing a stem cell transplant on some patients gives them a chance for a better outcome than high-dose chemotherapy.

Jacqueline Garcia, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is conducting a clinical trial with LLS's support to test an epigenetic targeting agent that may enhance the activity of a type of immunotherapy called a checkpoint inhibitor, which works by releasing the brakes from the immune system so it can attack the cancer cells.

LLS has supported work in targeting the BRAF gene in all of these blood cancers, and continues to do so in this latest round of grants, including two new grants:

Enrico Tiacci, MD, University of Perugia in Italy, and Jae Park, MD,  Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center both of whom are testing this therapy in combination with other drugs in hairy cell leukemia, as well as a grant to Carl Allen, MD, Ph.D, Baylor College of Medicine, who will be examining the utility of inhibiting the BRAF pathway in children with LCH.