Meet a Texas Researcher Funded by You

Dr. Helen Heslop is one of more than a dozen Texas researchers currently being funded by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS).  Heslop and her team work out of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and has been granted more than $6 million through 2018 in the form of an LLS SCOR grant. Below she describes her project and its potential impact on the treatment of blood cancers.

"One of the central goals of modern cancer therapy is to develop treatments that effectively kill tumor cells while sparing normal tissues. Harnessing T cells from the patient`s own immune system appears to offer one of the best strategies to achieve this result. The clinical potential of T-cell-based immunotherapy has been demonstrated many times in the laboratory and in patients with certain virus-linked cancers, but translation of these findings to the bedside has not been easy. Investigators in this SCOR, who pioneered the adoption of T-cell immunotherapy for lymphoma, now propose to translate this early success to additional blood malignancies, including multiple myeloma and acute leukemia and propose four projects designed to test novel approaches to cancer immunotherapy. PROJECT 1 asks whether banked, or “off-the-shelf,” T-cell preparations can be used successfully to treat virus-related lymphomas. PROJECT 2 will use a novel oral vaccine as a delivery system for proteins common in multiple myeloma cells, in order to stimulate more robust T-cell responses against this cancer. PROJECT 3 has modified T cells to express an artificial receptor, called a CAR, and is testing whether this addition will improve the precision of T-cell targeting of multiple myeloma. Finally, in PROJECT 4 the intent is to eradicate residual leukemia cells with T cells that have been stimulated with four different leukemia-related antigens. In all instances, the research projects are expected to interact with each other on a regular basis, so that the achievements of any single project should be greatly enhanced. Ultimately, the information generated by this SCOR proposal is expected to lead to more effective, and potentially curative, treatments for patients with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma."

The Marshall A. Lichtman Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) program is LLS' most ambitious research opportunity.  This innovative program supports interdisciplinary research across at least three independent research projects that are integrated and supported by scientific core laboratories.

Mission Monday: Texas Researcher Wins Major LLS Grant

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) today announced it has awarded four new grants through its prestigious Marshall A. Lichtman Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) research initiative, bringing the program's total funding to $285 million since its inception in 2000.

Helen E. Heslop, MD, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX is one of four recipients of this grant. Heslop and her team of 11 colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, will expand upon previous success in mobilizing the immune system to control blood cancers by attempting to define safer, simpler, and more effective immunotherapies for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and multiple myeloma (MM). They will investigate if naturally occurring "off the shelf" cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), also known as killer T cells, can be as effective under some circumstances as engineered T cells against lymphoma. In addition, they will devise ways to augment the effectiveness of CTLs in MM and optimize strategies to isolate and expand CTLs against ALL. This research is significant because immunotherapies may produce better responses in patients compared with existing therapies. Beyond that, there is a need to reduce the complexity and cost in order to make such therapy accessible to more patients. 

The innovative SCOR program funds teams of researchers representing different disciplines and engaged in collaborative efforts to discover new approaches to treat patients with blood cancers. Each team will each receive $1.25 million a year for five years, for a total of $6.25 million. 

Mission Monday: Meet a LLS-Funded Researcher in Texas

Helen Heslop, M.D. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) spends millions of dollars every year supporting the work of the best and brightest blood cancer researchers around the world. Today we introduce you to Helen Heslop, M.D. of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.  Dr. Heslop's work has been sponsored by LLS since 2009. Her focus is on manipulating cells to keep them from becoming resistant to anticancer drugs and below she describes a current joint project that is showing great promise.

"Chemotherapy for lymphoma often cures the disease, but the intensive drug treatments that destroy lymphoma cells also kill normal cells, resulting in serious side effects. Another problem with standard treatment is that the lymphoma cells can become resistant to one or more of the anticancer drugs, so that the disease can come back. One way to avoid these complications is to use the patient’s own immunity to target lymphoma cells while sparing healthy tissues and organs. Investigators in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine have found that a particular kind of immune cell called the cytotoxic T lymphocytes, or CTLs - can be manipuiated to effectively treat for some types of lymphoma related to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). They now plan to modify their successful treatment strategies so that they will apply to patients with other types of lymphoma. Drs Cliona Rooney and Helen Heslop will improve treatments for the types of Hodgkin and other lymphomas associated with EBV by re-focusing the CTLs onto two EBV-derived structures on the tumor cell surface. They will also give patients an antibody that will remove many of the cells and molecules that stop the CTLs working at tumor sites. They will also engineer the CTLs cells so that they will become able to recognize a structure that is present on the tumor cells of almost all patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, not just those whose disease is associated with EBV. This approach is based on studies by Dr Malcolm Brenner, who has shown that CTLs for lymphoma can be redirected to tumors by changing the targeting-molecules they express on their surface. Dr Brenner will test this approach in lymphoma patients whose cells express a structure called CD19. He will also test the idea that changing other CTL surface molecules will allow cells to evade the body`s defenses against self-directed immune responses and kill larger numbers of lymphoma cells. Finally, Dr Si-Yi Chen has discovered that the action of an unusual protein called suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1) can be switched-off to allow a different type of immune cell called a dendritic cell to provide stronger stimulation of CTLs. If switching-off SOCS1 improves CTL killing of lymphoma cells in mice, this strategy will be tested in patients, by giving a dendritic cell vaccine. These investigators are creating a collaborative research environment that will yield better results that would be expected from a single laboratory working in isolation. Their long-term goal is to advance cure rates in Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin Iymphomas without the side effects typically seen with conventional treatments, and ultimately to extend the benefits of CTL therapy to other blood cancers."