CDP SPECSII Consortium Develops Lymph2CX Assay for B Cell Lymphoma

Dr. Lisa Rimsza’s Program funded by the SPECSII grant, has reached an important milestone in progress towards their long-term goal of developing gene expression profiling data (GEP) into laboratory tests for the diagnosis and prognosis of aggressive B cell lymphoma for incorporation into clinical trials and patient care. Nanostring Technologies Inc. has partnered with Celgene Corp., a leading biopharmaceutical company, to support the development and commercialization of the Lymph2Cx assay developed by this SPECSII group. The Lymph2Cx assay is a 2-way classifier that is focused on distinguishing between two subtypes of aggressive B-cell Non-Hodgkins lymphoma: Activated B Cell-like diffuse large B cell lymphoma (ABC-DLBCL) and Germinal Center B cell-like DLBCL (GCB-DLBCL). This development comes in time for several large clinical trials focusing on ABC-DLBCL that are in the planning stage.

Aggressive B cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs) are lethal diseases that together account for the majority of lymphoma cases in North America and Europe. Currently, the subtypes of NHL have been diagnosed based on pathology reviews, cytogenetics and immunophenotype, but there has been no adequate method to distinguish the ABC vs. GBC forms of the disease. The Lymph2Cx assay is a major breakthrough as a test based on gene signatures derived from large subsets of patient specimens. This assay may be used in the future as a companion diagnostic for drugs such as ibrutinib, which are used to target ABC-DLBCL.