What is some of the most promising research being done to treat DLBCL?

What is some of the most promising research being done to treat DLBCL in 2023? One of the most advanced treatments, the more promising treatment for DLBCL other than the standard that we have, are immunotheraplates. We also try to put the immune system work against the lymphoma, so the way to improve immunity and attack the lymphoma. So we have different ways to do that, but one of the ways is to administrate immunotherapy like antibodies, specific antibodies and also CAR-T cells. So I think the most exciting thing that happened in the last five years is the advent of cellular engineered cell therapy in the form of CAR-T cells to treat DLBCL in the relapsed setting. So I think that has been a game changer in our field because as I said, the lucky few are the 60 to 65% of people who get cured with this disease and remain free of disease at five years and ten years and are potentially cured. But there are around 30 to 40% of people in whom the disease either doesn't respond at all or comes back. And usually the disease comes back within the first two years after you finish treatment. So previously we only had more chemotherapy and stem cell transplant as the only option for those patients. And that is shifting and at least for people in whom the disease comes back within the first year. Now the standard of care for patients who can get CAR-T cells is to move to CAR-T cells. And that has been a game changer. So what is most exciting for me is how we can adapt and move the CAR-T revolution, including the other competing group of treatments called bispecific antibodies, into more upfront lines of treatment to cure more people so that we move that 65% needle up to 90 or close to 100% in the future. So CAR-T basically stands for chimeric antigen receptor. That's what CAR stands for and T cell therapy. So what that basically does is this technology uses your own patient's immune system and we use their T cells, which are re-engineered by genetic engineering, to change them to something called as armored T cells or engineered T cells, which can seek and attack the hiding B lymphoma cells in the body. The current challenges of CAR-T cells is not available throughout the country. There is an access issue. Not everybody who needs CAR-T cells can get to CAR-T cells. And it's a very expensive process. And the three to five weeks of manufacturing time, some of the patients with very aggressive disease cannot really wait for those cells to come back. And we have to find some ways to keep them pasted together while we wait for the cells to come back. And that's where other newer techniques of either other forms of cell therapy or other form of immunotherapy will possibly revolutionize the field. There have been multiple breakthroughs over the last few years and we are seeing different implications of that research that has been done over the last few years. The major component is immunotherapy treatments using patients' own immune cells to kill cancer cells. There are a group of therapies called CAR-T cell therapies. There are a group of therapies called bispecific antibodies. These are approved for relapsed refractory patients starting from the second line. But current research is incorporating these treatments to the front line setting for patients that were never treated before. And that is very exciting. And that could improve the 60 to 70 percent cure rate over the next few years if these treatment modalities work better in untreated patients. There continues to be multiple different approaches to increasing the options for different targeted therapies depending on targeting specific mutations or pathways in the tumor cell. All of these are very exciting and again I think they're going to make the cure rates higher over the next few years.