City of Hope Receives $7.5 Million Grant to Study Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma
Posted: Wednesday, May 1, 2019
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded 2 grants valued at $6.3 million over 5 years to City of Hope’s Steven Rosen, MD, and Christiane Querfeld, MD, PhD, so they can work to develop improved therapies for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) also awarded the pair 2 individual grants totaling $1.2 million over 3 years. Drs. Rosen and Querfeld will approach the problem from different angles in their respective laboratories.
“City of Hope is creating a national model for how to treat CTCL,” said Dr. Rosen, its provost, Chief Scientific Officer, and the Morgan & Helen Chu Director’s Chair of the Beckman Research Institute. “We are grateful for the trust the federal government and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society have in us and our results.”
Dr. Querfeld, Chief of Dermatology and Director of City of Hope’s Cutaneous Lymphoma Program and a Schwartz Ward Family Foundation LLS Scholar, has been studying and treating patients with CTCL for 17 years. She will use her grants to advance her clinical phase I/II trial that examined immune checkpoint PD-1/PD-L1 inhibition. Her team will map the communication network among the disease’s cellular, molecular, and immunologic microenvironment.
“The result of this newly funded study will allow physicians to use personalized medicine for certain patients with CTCL,” Dr. Querfeld said. “We will identify potential therapeutic targets and correlative markers that help guide immunotherapy treatments.”
