An ex vivo Platform to Guide Drug Combination Treatment in Relapsed/Refractory Lymphoma (Sci Transl Med, Oct 2022)

Jasmine Goh 1Sanjay De Mel 2 3Michal M Hoppe 1Masturah Bte Mohd Abdul Rashid 4Xi Yun Zhang 1Patrick Jaynes 1Esther Ka Yan Ng 1Nur’Atiqa Diana Binti Rahmat 1Jayalakshmi 1Clementine Xin Liu 3Limei Poon 2 3Esther Chan 2 3Joanne Lee 2 3Yen Lin Chee 2 3Liang Piu Koh 3Lip Kun Tan 5Teck Guan Soh 5Yi Ching Yuen 6Hoi-Yin Loi 7Siok-Bian Ng 1 2 8Xueying Goh 9Donovan Eu 9Stanley Loh 7Sheldon Ng 7Daryl Tan 10 11Daryl Ming Zhe Cheah 12Wan Lu Pang 12Dachuan Huang 12Shin Yeu Ong 11Chandramouli Nagarajan 11Jason Yongsheng Chan 13 14Jeslin Chian Hung Ha 13Lay Poh Khoo 13Nagavalli Somasundaram 13Tiffany Tang 13Choon Kiat Ong 12 15 16Wee-Joo Chng 1 2 3 17Soon Thye Lim 13 14 18Edward K Chow 1 2 19 20 21Anand D Jeyasekharan 1 2 3 17

Affiliations

  • 1Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117599, Singapore.
  • 2NUS Center for Cancer Research (N2CR), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University Singapore, Singapore 117599, Singapore.
  • 3Department of Haematology-Oncology, National University Cancer Institute, Singapore, National University Health System, Singapore 119074, Singapore.
  • 4KYAN Therapeutics, Singapore 118258, Singapore.
  • 5Department of Laboratory Medicine, National University Hospital, Singapore 119074, Singapore.
  • 6Department of Pharmacy, National University Health System, Singapore 119074, Singapore.
  • 7Department of Diagnostic Imaging, National University Hospital, Singapore 119074, Singapore.
  • 8Department of Pathology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.
  • 9Department of Otolaryngology, National University Hospital, Singapore 119074, Singapore.
  • 10Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Singapore 329563, Singapore.
  • 11Department of Haematology, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore 169608, Singapore.
  • 12Lymphoma Genomic Translational Research Laboratory, Division of Cellular and Molecular Research, National Cancer Centre Singapore, Singapore 169610, Singapore.
  • 13Division of Medical Oncology, National Cancer Centre Singapore, Singapore 169610, Singapore.
  • 14SingHealth Duke-NUS Blood Cancer Centre, Singapore 168582, Singapore.
  • 15Programme in Cancer and Stem Cell Biology, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore 169857, Singapore.
  • 16Genome Institute of Singapore, A*STAR, Singapore 138672, Singapore.
  • 17Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.
  • 18Office of Education, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore 169857, Singapore.
  • 19Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.
  • 20N.1 Institute for Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117456, Singapore.
  • 21Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.

Abstract

Although combination therapy is the standard of care for relapsed/refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (RR-NHL), combination treatment chosen for an individual patient is empirical, and response rates remain poor in individuals with chemotherapy-resistant disease. Here, we evaluate an experimental-analytic method, quadratic phenotypic optimization platform (QPOP), for prediction of patient-specific drug combination efficacy from a limited quantity of biopsied tumor samples. In this prospective study, we enrolled 71 patients with RR-NHL (39 B cell NHL and 32 NK/T cell NHL) with a median of two prior lines of treatment, at two academic hospitals in Singapore from November 2017 to August 2021. Fresh biopsies underwent ex vivo testing using a panel of 12 drugs with known efficacy against NHL to identify effective single and combination treatments. Individualized QPOP reports were generated for 67 of 75 patient samples, with a median turnaround time of 6 days from sample collection to report generation. Doublet drug combinations containing copanlisib or romidepsin were most effective against B cell NHL and NK/T cell NHL samples, respectively. Off-label QPOP-guided therapy offered at physician discretion in the absence of standard options (n = 17) resulted in five complete responses. Among patients with more than two prior lines of therapy, the rates of progressive disease were lower with QPOP-guided treatments than with conventional chemotherapy. Overall, this study shows that the identification of patient-specific drug combinations through ex vivo analysis was achievable for RR-NHL in a clinically applicable time frame. These data provide the basis for a prospective clinical trial evaluating ex vivo-guided combination therapy in RR-NHL.

PMID: 36260690  DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abn7824