Looking for the perfect clue to reduce toxicity in Hodgkin Lymphoma

This project was selected in the framework of our fourth European call: FIGHT KIDS CANCER 2023. It is jointly financed by Imagine for Margo, Kriibskrank Kanner Fondatioun, CRIS Cancer Foundation, KiKa and KickCancer.

It is thanks to your participation in RUN TO KICK that this innovative project will be funded! Register now for RUN TO KICK 2023 and help us finance 9 new innovative research projects.

Classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) accounts for 15% of all cases of cancer in children and adolescents and represents the first cause of cancer during adolescence.

Today, almost 90% of patients with cHL achieve long-term survival with “classical” treatment options such as chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy. These treatments are very toxic during the treatment (“acute” toxicity) but can also cause long-term side effects (“long-term” toxicity). Accordingly, there is a need to focus on the reduction of both acute and long-term toxicity.

To reduce toxicity, we must reduce the intensity of treatments – but we can only do that by properly identifying first the patients with the “lower” risk types of cHL. This is what we call “risk stratification”.

Today, patients are categorised into risk groups on the basis of imaging (such as scans).

This project (‘Eurholy’) will aim at defining a new methodology to categorise patients by developing a new biological marker that can be found in the patient’s blood. Research in adults’ lymphoma shows indeed that a “liquid biopsy”, which looks for the cancer’s circulating DNA is a valid approach. In this case, the project will look for this cancer’s typical cells, the multinucleated giant cells named Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg (HRS).

The research teams have access to 500 samples from past trials and will include samples from 400 additional patients that will be included in ongoing clinical trials.

Thanks to a more accurate risk stratification, it will become possible to reduce the long-term toxicity of the treatments by identifying the patients for whom radiotherapy is not needed and by omitting some of the most toxic chemotherapy.