Congratulations to Prof Eliza Hawkes and her team, who were awarded a $1.9m Cancer Australia grant to lead translational research that could create new treatment avenues for hard-to-treat lymphoma patients.
Lymphoma is the most common blood cancer, and one of the most costly and complex to treat.
Early-Onset incurable non-Hodgkin lymphoma (EO-iL) is a growing and significant high burden disease. It remains poorly studied, with no screening tests, predictive tools, or tailored care models. It is therefore challenging for healthcare professionals to determine what treatments patients will respond to.
This Cancer Australia funding will enable ONJCRI’s Lymphoma Clinical Innovations Laboratory to activate the iLIMM study, which involves:
- Mapping the tumour, immune system and microbiome in over 140 participants across Australia with newly diagnosed incurable lymphoma. This will help the researchers determine whether patient outcomes can be correlated to immune health and gut microbiome.
- Testing whether physical exercise could improve outcomes for younger lymphoma patients. In a pilot trial, 36 EO-iL patients will undertake 12 weeks of structured exercise, testing the impact on their cancer compared to untreated controls.
Prof Eliza Hawkes said: “Our national, multidisciplinary “iLIMM” study brings together a team of researchers with diverse expertise to deep dive into the impact of incurable Lymphoma cancer.
“This includes understanding immune system changes in patients with this diagnosis before they start treatment, then using exercise as an immune-stimulating treatment to try to improve the control of the cancer by the immune system, thus potentially avoiding or deferring cancer treatments.”
Exercise has been shown to help improve patient outcomes for other types of cancer, including treatment response for some cancers.
Prof Eliza Hawkes said: “Our goal is to develop an evidence-based, exercise intervention, which is accessible to all iL patients, regardless of postcode or socioeconomic status.”
The hope is that exercise is shown to improve response to treatment in these younger and incurable lymphoma patients.
This study is a wonderful combination of scientific research at the bench and clinical research at the patient’s bedside, and a real demonstration of ONJCRI’s bedside-to-bench-to-bedside research model that will push the boundaries of lymphoma research. ONJCRI is affiliated with La Trobe University as the School of Cancer Medicine.
Collaborators include The University of Queensland, Austin Health, Monash University and The Council of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.
Read the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) announcement here.