Clinical Research

Cohort Based Studies

Global PETAL (Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma) Consortium: MGH has founded the PETAL consortium, a comprehensive international community of multiple clinical centers and principal investigators across 6 continents with specialized expertise in T-cell lymphoma who are committed to accelerating scientific breakthroughs into effective patient care. You can learn more about the Global PETAL Consortium here.

  1. First Initiative: There has been a progressive increase in therapies for patients with relapsed and refractory (R/R) peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCLs) in the last decade, including antibody-drug conjugates, epigenetic modifiers, small molecule inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies. Their comparative efficacy to conventional chemotherapy (CC) globally remains unknown. As its first project, PETAL created the largest global dataset of patients with relapsed and refractory (R/R) PTCL (n=925) with annotated, detailed clinical information ranging from baseline demographics through pathology, contemporary treatments, response characteristics, and stem cell transplantation. This unique dataset has enabled us to benchmark global trends in treatment strategies selected by physicians and associated outcomes in the R/R setting over the last decade. This marks a critical advancement that will inform the design of novel trials and treatment platforms for this highly heterogeneous and rare neoplasm encompassing 34 different subtypes. Further, we were able to demonstrate that novel single agents including epigenetic therapies, small molecule inhibitors, and antibody drug conjugates are comparable to conventional multiagent cytotoxic regimens in the second line treatment setting, even at a global stage, in line with our previous reports. We developed a novel causal inference method Survival Synthetic Intervention that can estimate survival outcomes with minimal data.
  2. Second Initiative: The second initiative of PETAL consortium is a prospective longitudinal observational study of newly diagnosed and relapsed/refractory patients with mature T-cell and NK-cell neoplasm at participating institutions. Patients will be enrolled in the study during the course of their first visit as a new patient at the participating institution and followed for up to 4 years through the course of their clinical management. Routine demographics, baseline clinical features, including pathology, molecular information related to the tumor, radiology, treatment characteristics, and health related quality of life (HRQoL) related to their lymphoma care will be collected over the course of 4 years by clinical research teams at every participating institution. Next generation sequencing, including but not limited to whole exome and bulk RNA-sequencing will be performed on archived lymphoma specimens using saliva as germline control for detailed molecular characterization of the tumor.

click to enlarge image

Lymphoma Biorepository

Alongside Drs Louissaint, Soumerai and Abramson we participate in generation and maintenance of a large tissue bank of serial patient-derived frozen lymphoma specimens including tumor biopsies, plasma, cfDNA, PBMCs and  saliva. These specimens are highly annotated and connected to a large clinical database that stores associated clinical, pathologic and genetic information. This is an invaluable resource that supports the research efforts in the lymphoma division and provides impetus to internal and external collaborations. 

click to enlarge image