Strategies for Improving Outcomes in CAR T-cell Therapy for DLBCL

Frederick L. Locke, MD is a medical oncologist and translational investigator dedicated to discovering and implementing ways to use the immune system against lymphoid malignancies. He is the Program Leader for Cellular Immunotherapy, Co-Program Leader for Immuno-Oncology, and Chair of the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy (BMT-CI) at Moffitt Cancer Center. Dr. Locke is a first, or senior, author on numerous high impact publications, including articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, JAMA Oncology and Blood.

As Program Leader for Cellular Immunotherapy, Dr. Locke oversees Moffitt’s Immune Cell Therapy (ICE-T) cross departmental effort providing specialized care of high-risk immunotherapy and cellular therapy patients, regardless of tumor type. The ICE-T program utilizes the resources of the BMT-CI Department to deliver these therapies and the program was recognized when it received an NCI Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award. This program serves as the hub for both the clinical trial coordination and clinical care for cellular immunotherapy patients.

As Chair and an associate member of the Moffitt Cancer Center Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy (BMT-CI), Dr. Locke’s individual research is focused on the development of strategies to promote T-cell responses against tumor associated antigens (TAA) for patients with lymphoma and multiple myeloma. He has significant experience as a principal investigator (PI) running cellular immunotherapy clinical trials. Dr. Locke was the worldwide Co-Lead PI for the ZUMA-1 trial, the first multicenter trial evaluating CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for adult aggressive lymphomas, as well as worldwide Lead PI for ZUMA-7, the first randomized phase 3 trial testing CAR T-cell therapy against a standard of care.

Dr. Locke’s translational efforts are aimed at determining the mechanisms of resistance to CAR T-cell therapy in lymphoma and myeloma and developing new treatment strategies to circumvent these apparatuses. His research has been supported by peer-reviewed funding from the National Cancer Institute, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the American Cancer Society, and the Conquer Cancer Foundation.
 

Gilles Salles, MD, PhD is Chief of the Lymphoma Service, Division of Hematologic Malignancies at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Salles received his MD and PhD from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon and completed a residency in medicine at Lyon University Hospitals in Lyon, France. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School (Dana Farber Cancer Institute) in immunology. Since 1996, he has held the position of Professor of Medicine (Hematology) at the University Claude Bernard of Lyon and has served as Chair of the Department of Hematology at Lyon University Hospital since 2011.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Salles has been interested in the clinical and biological diversity of malignant lymphoma. Major focuses of his work include the description and validation of prognostic factors as well as clinical trials in indolent lymphomas and he has well over 600 peer reviewed publications. As an established international leader in the field of lymphoma, Dr. Salles has also led several programs and developed expertise in the clinical care of patients with lymphoma, development of novel clinical trials, and held numerous leadership positions.