The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society made a $4 million funding commitment in an investigational therapy being developed by Forty Seven Inc. for lymphoma patients.
LLS’s investment will support Forty Seven’s clinical trial using an antibody therapy (Hu5F9-G4) aimed at treating two types of NHL – diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and follicular lymphoma.
DLBCL represents approximately 30 percent of NHL patients, with 60 percent of patients surviving five years after diagnosis; however, more than one-third of patients either relapse or do not respond to therapy. Approximately 25 percent of NHL patients are diagnosed with FL, a slow-growing form of the disease.
While most patients with FL respond to initial therapy, more than 70 percent are diagnosed with advanced stage disease and are considered incurable. The novel drug will be tested in combination with the FDA-approved rituximab, already part of standard treatment for several types of NHL.
The therapy is directed against CD47, a protein that provides a “don’t eat me” signal to the immune system and blocks the ability of immune cells called macrophages to devour those cancer cells. The combination Hu5F9-G4 and rituximab displayed synergy in preclinical animal models of NHL.
Forty Seven was founded in 2015 by Stanford University researchers Irv Weissman and Ravi Majeti, both of whom have been recipients of LLS grants supporting their early work targeting CD47. Forty Seven has licensed the therapy from Stanford.
