Dr. Giorgio Inghirami

Nearly 90 percent of patients with an aggressive subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma had their cancer go into remission in a small phase 2 clinical trial testing a treatment aimed at making chemotherapy more effective, according to Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators.

Endothelial cells—the cells that line blood vessels—grown alongside leukemia cells become corrupted and rescue the cancer cells from many chemotherapy drugs, a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators found.

The environment surrounding the cancerous cells of a lymphoma tumor has a strong influence on the progression of these blood-cell cancers and their responses to therapies.

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a five-year, $9 million Program Project Grant (P01) from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to better understand how and why patients with an aggressive and incurable form of lymphoma initially respond to treatment, only to relapse over time. 

The tumor microenvironment can determine whether cancer cells become aggressive cancer stem cells that are resistant to treatment and cause cancers to come back after therapy.