Dr. Ansell Discusses Immune Evasion in Lymphoma

Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD, chair of the Lymphoma Group at Mayo Clinic, discusses immune invasion in lymphoma.

Ansell says that one of the biggest challenges in lymphoma is that many immune cells are present in the tumor, but they are not killing the tumor cells. This begs the question of how the tumor cell hides from the immune system as well as it does. There are many barriers to a good response in lymphoma, Ansell says. The immune cells are worn out from being persistently activated, and sometimes there are other cells in the area that can suppress their activity.

There are proteins that either are made on the tumor cell, or proteins like cytokines that activate the immune system, that exhaust the immune system over time. Ansell says the goal in answering this question of immune evasion is getting the T cell to kill the tumor cell efficiently. There are multiple strategies under evaluation to try to reach this goal.