FUNDED PROJECTS

In some patients with blood cancers, the immune system can become dangerously overactive. The extreme end of this activation is HLH (hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis), a cytokine storm leading to organ dysfunction and death in 10-30% of these patients.

This project aims to better understand why this happens and find new ways to treat it.

Key points:
1. In 5-20% of blood cancer patients, the immune system can become overly active and thus be harmful instead of helpful.
2. We have developed a way to detect early signs of this problem using two blood tests, soluble CD25 and ferritin, in an index called the Optimized HLH Inflammatory (OHI) index.
3. By studying thousands of proteins in patients' blood, we have found similarities between this immune overactivation in blood cancer patients and the genetic form of HLH observed in children.
4. Unlike in children with genetic HLH, we can't simply shut down the immune system in cancer patients, as it is needed to fight the cancer.
Our research goals:
1. Better define this immune overactivation problem in large groups of blood cancer patients.
2. Identify specific pathways involved and test drugs that might help.
3. Examine what's happening inside tumors to understand why immune cells become both overactive and ineffective.
Our ultimate aim is to develop personalized treatments that can control the dangerous aspects of immune overactivation while still allowing the immune system to fight the cancer. This could significantly improve survival rates for these high-risk patients.