Combining drugs to create a new treatment for follicular lymphoma

Follicular lymphoma is the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). It develops when white blood cells cluster together to form lumps in your lymph glands or organs. Follicular lymphoma can be managed but most cases currently have no cure. Tazemetostat is an existing drug that was recently developed to treat follicular lymphoma. It works by controlling what molecules are switched on and off inside the cell. Although tazemetostat can treat follicular lymphoma, it only works for a short period of time and doesn’t completely get rid of the disease which means it nearly always comes back.

Dr Riches and his team want to test using tazemetostat with other drugs to see if they can find a way to make it work better, so that it works for longer periods of time and gets rid of all the cancer cells so that the disease cannot come back. In his previous research, Dr Riches has found that lymphoma cells rely on a molecule called ‘serine’ to be able to grow and survive. He hopes that by combining tazemetostat with other drugs that stop the lymphoma cancers cells from being able to use ‘serine’ will mean the cancer is attacked from all angles and therefore cannot grow in numbers and won’t survive.

They hope that combining tazemetostat with other drugs will offer a better, more effective treatment option for people with follicular lymphoma and hope that one day it could mean that the disease will be cured so people with the disease don’t have to live knowing that eventually their cancer will come back. If successful, Dr Riches and his team hope to be able to run a clinical trial of this new drug combination in people with follicular lymphoma. Ultimately this could mean a future where there is a new and better treatment for people with follicular lymphoma, getting us closer to a day where no lives are lost to blood cancer.