Michael Wang

• Senior Researcher at AITG

Follicular lymphoma (FL) has a clinical course often defined by high response rates to first-line therapy, followed by multiple relapses over a prolonged natural history. Currently, there are multiple possible approaches to frontline therapy for untreated advanced-stage FL, with debate remaining as to what is the preferred approach. Given prior ben...

The MCL35 gene expression assay encompasses key risk features and stratified elderly MCL patients using routine biopsies. In the SHINE trial, high-risk patients had poor outcomes despite adding ibrutinib to bendamustine-rituximab, highlighting urgent need for novel strategies in high-risk MCL.

Significant progress in determining the molecular origins and resistance mechanisms of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) has improved our understanding of the disease's clinical diversity. These factors greatly impact prognosis in MCL patients. Given the dynamic alterations in MCL clones and disease evolution, it is crucial to recognize high-risk prognost...

Antibiotic-induced microbiome dysbiosis is widespread in oncology, adversely affecting outcomes and side effects of various cancer treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapies. In this study, we observed that prior exposure to broad-spectrum ABX with extended anaerobic coverage like piper...

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for assessing drug safety by combining treatment-related toxicological findings across multiple studies, as clinical trials are typically underpowered for detecting adverse drug effects. However, incomplete reporting of adverse events (AEs) in published clinical studies is frequently encountered, especially if the o...

This phase 1b study (NCT02717624) evaluated the safety and efficacy of acalabrutinib, venetoclax, and rituximab (AVR) in treatment-naive mantle cell lymphoma (TN MCL). Patients received acalabrutinib from cycle 1 until progressive disease or undue toxicity, rituximab for 6 cycles with maintenance every other cycle through cycle 24 or until progress...

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) has a poor prognosis and high relapse rates despite current therapies, necessitating novel treatment regimens. Inhibition of SRC-3 show effectiveness in vivo and in vitro in other B cell lymphomas. Additionally, previous studies have shown that SRC-3 is highly expressed in the lymph nodes of B cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma...

Prior studies have demonstrated that certain populations including older patients, racial/ethnic minority groups, and women are underrepresented in clinical trials. We performed a retrospective analysis of patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) seen at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) to investigate the association between trial participation, r...

Introduction: BTK inhibitors (BTKis) are approved for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Waldenström macroglobulinemia (WM), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), and marginal zone lymphoma (MZL). Disease that progresses on BTKis often has BTK mutations that lead to treatment (tx) resistance; novel BTK-targeting agents that overcome BTKi resistance are need...

Background Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a rare and aggressive subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Development of BTK inhibitors (BTKis) and CAR-T cells revolutionized the treatment paradigm for the patients with MCL. However, this aggressive B-cell lymphoma frequently relapses leading to poor survival. Therefore, novel therapies are in urgent need to...

Background: Pts with R/R MCL after ≥ 2 prior lines of therapy, including a Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTKi), have poor prognosis. Among pts with R/R MCL, several high-risk disease features are associated with a worse prognosis, including TP53 mutation, high proliferation index (Ki-67 ≥ 30%), blastoid morphology, and secondary CNS involvement...

Background: Despite the efficacy of covalent (c) Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors (BTKi) in R/R MCL, disease relapse arises through evolution of resistance mechanisms or development of cBTKi intolerance. Pirtobrutinib, a highly selective, non-covalent (reversible) BTKi has favorable oral pharmacology that enables continuous BTK inhibition througho...

Background: Bendamustine and rituximab (BR) is a standard-of-care first-line (1L) therapy for older or unfit patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). The SHINE trial compared BR with rituximab maintenance plus ibrutinib vs placebo in patients ≥65 years old and showed that the ibrutinib arm had significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS;...

BACKGROUND: The therapeutic landscape for B-cell lymphomas (BCL) leverages several modalities, including chemotherapy, targeted agents, adoptive cell therapy, and immunotherapy. While these approaches have shown clinical benefit, challenges remain, such as variable response rates, treatment resistance, and toxicities. ROR1-specific CAR T-cell thera...

Introduction Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an aggressive subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Even most advanced therapies are generally followed by resistance and relapse, creating an urgent need for novel drugs to overcome resistance. Our and other studies have shown transcriptome is abnormally reprogrammed in patients with therapeutic resistance. CD...

Background: Patients (pts) with R/R MCL and TP53 mutation/deletion, or high Ki-67 proliferation index (PI), have historically had limited treatment options with dismal outcomes. Brexu-cel is a CAR T-cell therapy approved in the US for adults with R/R MCL. Real-world data has been consistent with that of clinical trials (Kambhampati et al. 2023). In...

Background: New treatment options are needed for patients (pts) with relapsed/refractory (R/R) mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), especially for pts with progressive disease (PD) after Bruton's tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTKi) therapy. Outcomes for R/R MCL pts with PD after the BTKi ibrutinib are very poor, demonstrated by a median overall survival of 2.9...

Background - We reported the efficacy and safety of using a combination of ibrutinib plus rituximab (IR) induction followed by short course (4 cycles) of R-HCVAD/MTX-ara-C as consolidation in previously untreated young (age ≤ 65 years)patients (pts) with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), Wang M et al Lancet Oncology 2022. Here we report the long term fol...

Background: MCL is an aggressive form of NHL. Despite high initial response rates to currently available frontline therapies for newly diagnosed MCL, patients will inevitably experience relapse. Survival outcomes are poor for patients with R/R MCL. Lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel) is an autologous, CD19-directed, 4-1BB CAR T cell product adminis...

Background: CAR-T cell therapies have revolutionized cancer therapeutics with durable responses in hematologic malignancies. However, toxicities such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity (ICANS) are well-established off-target effects of CAR-T therapy. Immune effector cell (IEC) therapy can result in...

Introduction: Brexu-cel is an autologous anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy approved in the United States for the treatment of adults with R/R MCL and in the European Union for adults with R/R MCL who received ≥2 prior therapies, including a Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTKi). After a median of 35.6-months follow-up in th...

Introduction: Although BTK inhibitors (BTKi) are effective therapeutics in the treatment of B cell malignancies, emerging BTK resistance mutations in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), as well as potential growth-promoting kinase-independent scaffolding function of BTK, present a need for improved or new approaches. Additionally, preclinical and c...

Introduction - Previously, our group reported results from ibrutinib with rituximab in older mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) patients (pts) with an atrial fibrillation rate of 22%. To develop a chemotherapy-free combination for elderly MCL pts, we designed this phase II clinical trial to investigate the efficacy and safety of acalabrutinib with rituxima...

Background: Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) patients usually require immediate therapy, however about 20% of newly diagnosed MCL patients can be initially observed. A subgroup of patients who are suitable for initial observation but exhibit high-risk features are of particular concern as they have a propensity to progress. We consider these patients as...

Background: Follicular lymphoma (FL) is a chronic and incurable disease requiring multiple lines of therapy for patients (pts) with relapsed/refractory (R/R) disease. Covalent Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors (cBTKi) have transformed the management of select B-cell malignancies, in particular chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and mantle cell lymp...

Introduction - Patients (pts) with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) with blastoid (B-MCL) and pleomorphic (P-MCL) histology are traditionally considered as high risk; however, there is a paucity of information regarding the differences between P-MCL and B-MCL compared to classic MCL (C-MCL) histology. In this study, we present a comprehensive genomic and...

Introduction: Brexu-cel is an autologous anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy approved in the United States for the treatment of adults with R/R MCL and in the European Union for adults with R/R MCL after ≥2 prior therapies, including a Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTKi). In the Phase 2 ZUMA-2 study, with a median follow-up...

Lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel) demonstrated significant efficacy with a manageable safety profile as third-line or later treatment in patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) in the TRANSCEND NHL 001 study. Primary end points were adverse events (AE), dose-limiting toxicities, and objective response rate (ORR) pe...

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma; data indicates that blastoid and pleomorphic variants have a poor prognosis. We report characteristics and outcomes of patients with blastoid/pleomorphic variants of MCL. We retrospectively studied adults with newly diagnosed MCL treated from 2000-2015. Primary objectives were to describe...

Patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), an incurable B-cell malignancy, benefit from accurate pretreatment disease stratification. We curated an extensive database of 862 patients diagnosed between 2014 and 2022. A machine learning (ML) gradient-boosted model incorporated baseline features from clinicopathologic, cytogenetic, and genomic data wit...

Purpose: Pirtobrutinib is a highly selective, non-covalent (reversible) Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTKi). We report the safety and efficacy of pirtobrutinib in patients with covalent (c) BTKi pre-treated mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), a population with poor prognosis. Patients and methods: Patients with cBTKi pre-treated relapsed/refractory...

Background: Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an uncommon B-cell lymphoma. The clinical course is highly variable: some patients have aggressive disease and relapse after treatment, while others have indolent disease or respond exceptionally to frontline therapy. Prognostication of MCL patients is dynamic and continues to evolve as novel therapies deve...

Increasing evidence suggests that the gut microbiome may modulate the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. In a B cell lymphoma patient cohort from five centers in Germany and the United States (Germany, n = 66; United States, n = 106; total, n = 172), we demonstrate that wide-spectrum antibiotics treatment (‘high-risk antibiotics’) prior to CD19-targ...

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a heterogeneous disease with a poor prognosis. Despite years of research in MCL, relapse occurs in patients with current therapeutic options necessitating the development of novel therapeutic agents. Previous attempts to pharmacologically inhibit SRC-3 show effectiveness in vivo and in vitro in other B cell lymphomas,...

Purpose: Brexucabtagene autoleucel (brexu-cel) is an autologous CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy approved for relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). This therapy was approved on the basis of the single-arm phase II ZUMA-2 trial, which showed best overall and complete response rates of 91% and 68%, respectively....

Treatment with covalent Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors (BTKi) represents an important advance in the management of relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma, but these treatments are not curative and many patients ultimately relapse. Pirtobrutinib, a highly selective, non covalent (reversible) BTKi, inhibits both wild type and C481-mutant BTK...

Context: Covalent Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) inhibitors (BTKi) have transformed the management of relapsed mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), but many patients will require additional treatment. Pirtobrutinib is a highly selective, non-covalent (reversible) BTKi that inhibits both wild type and C481-mutated BTK with equal low nM potency. Objective:...

Context: Covalent BTK inhibitors (BTKi) have transformed the management of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), but most patients will require additional treatment. Pirtobrutinib is a highly selective, non-covalent (reversible) BTKi that inhibits both wild-type and C481-mutated BTK with equal low nM potency. Objective: To evaluate pirtobrutinib safety an...

Background Induction with ibrutinib and rituximab provides an opportunity to minimise chemotherapy exposure, because upfront use of these targeted therapies could result in remission without chemotherapy and allow for consolidation with only four cycles of chemotherapy instead of the conventional eight. We aimed to determine the activity and safety...

Front-line treatment for follicular lymphoma has evolved with the introduction of maintenance therapy, bendamustine (Benda), obinutuzumab (G), and lenalidomide (Len). We conducted a random-effects Bayesian network meta-analysis (NMA) of phase 3 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to identify the regimens with superior efficacy. Progression-free sur...

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive B-cell lymphomas are common in immunocompromised patients and remain an unmet medical need. Here we report that MDM2 inhibitors (MDM2i) navtemadlin and idasanutlin have potent in vivo activity in EBV+ B-cell lymphoma established in immunocompromised mice. Tumor regression was observed in all 5 EBV+ xenograft-associ...

PURPOSE Most patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) are older. In this study, we investigated the efficacy and safety of a chemotherapy-free combination with ibrutinib and rituximab (IR) in previously untreated older patients with MCL (age ≥ 65 years). METHODS We enrolled 50 patients with MCL in this single-institution, single-arm, phase II clin...

Background: Covalent Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) inhibitors (BTKi) have transformed the management of relapsed mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), but these treatments are not curative and the majority of patients will require additional treatment. Covalent BTKi share pharmacologic liabilities (e.g. low oral bioavailability, short half-life) that collec...

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an uncommon subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in which immunochemotherapy +/- high dose therapy and autologous stem cell transplantation remains standard front-line therapy. Despite clear efficacy, patients envitably relapse requiring subsequent therapy. Within this review, we discuss the key therapeutic approaches in th...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.11814.].

Context Despite the marked efficacy of covalent BTK inhibitors (BTKi) in MCL, WM, and MZL, the development of resistance and discontinuation for adverse events can lead to treatment failure. Low oral bioavailability or short half-life of these agents can lead to suboptimal BTK target coverage and ultimately result in acquired resistance in some pat...

18F-FDG PET/CT can provide quantitative characterization with prognostic value for mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). However, detection of MCL is performed manually, which is labor intensive and not a part of the routine clinical practice. This study investigates a deep learning convolutional neural network (DLCNN) for computer-aided detection of MCL on...

Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) is a catalytic component of the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) which reduces gene expression via trimethylation of a lysine residue of histone 3 (H3K27me3). Expression of EZH2 has not been assessed systematically in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Expression of EZH2 was assessed by immunohistochemistry in 166 pa...

B-cell malignancies pose challenges due to therapeutic resistance and repeated relapse. Advances in adoptive cellular therapies including CAR T (chimeric antigen receptor t-cells) have the potential to transform the treatment landscape in hematological and solid tumor cancers. Improvements in constructs of CAR T have improved specificity in targeti...

Ibrutinib, a bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor, provokes robust clinical responses in aggressive mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), yet many patients relapse with lethal Ibrutinib-resistant (IR) disease. Here, using genomic, chemical proteomic, and drug screen profiling, we report that enhancer remodeling-mediated transcriptional activation and ada...

Corticosteroids are commonly used for the management of severe toxicities associated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. However, it remains unclear whether their dose, duration, and timing may impact clinical efficacy. Here, we determined the impact of corticosteroids on clinical outcomes in patients with relapsed or refractory la...

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for drug safety assessment by synthesizing treatment-related toxicological findings from independent clinical trials. However, published clinical studies may or may not report all adverse events (AEs) if the observed number of AEs were fewer than a pre-specified study-dependent cutoff. Subsequently, with censored in...

Key Points • RAC2, a known regulator of cell adhesion, was suppressed at both the RNA and protein levels by ibrutinib only in ibrutinib-sensitive MCL cells. • RAC2 links a BCR-signaling pathway to cell adhesion, partially through its physical association with BLNK, a BCR adaptor protein. Inhibition of the B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling pathway is...

Current efforts in the proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) field mostly focus on choosing an appropriate E3 ligase for the target protein, improving the binding affinities towards the target protein and the E3 ligase, and optimizing the PROTAC linker. However, due to the large molecular weights of PROTACs, their cellular uptake remains an issue....

Importance Sex, age, and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status (PS) may affect immune response. However, the association of these factors with the survival benefit of cancer immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) remains unclear. Objective To assess the potential sex, age, and ECOG PS differences of immunothe...

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an incurable rare subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is subject to relapse and therapeutic resistance. Molecular aberrations in MCL affect pathogenesis, prognosis, and therapeutic response. In this systematic review, we searched 3 databases and selected 32 articles that described mutations in MCL patients. We then con...

Venetoclax is effective in relapsed patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Mechanisms of resistance to venetoclax in MCL are poorly understood. We describe the clinical outcomes and genomic characteristics of 24 multiply relapsed patients (median of five prior lines of therapy) who received venetoclax‐based therapies; 67% had progressed on BTK i...

Blastoid and pleomorphic mantle cell lymphomas (MCLs) are variants of aggressive histology MCL (AH-MCL). AH-MCL can arise de novo (AH-DN) or transform from prior classic variant MCL (AH-t). This study is the first integrated analysis of clinical and genomic characteristics of AH-MCL. Patient characteristics were collected from diagnosis (AH-DN) and...

Current efforts in the proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) field mostly focus on choosing the appropriate E3 ligase for a certain targeted protein, improving the binding affinities towards the target protein and the E3 ligase, and optimizing the PROTAC linker. However, it is well known that due to the large sizes of PROTAC molecules, their cellu...

Introduction: Metabolic reprogramming promotes cancer cell growth, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance in a multitude of cancers. Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a rare and aggressive hematopoietic malignancy that exhibits dramatic alterations in the cellular metabolism, especially in advanced stages and at the time of relapse. Unchecked pro-tumor...

BTK inhibitors such as ibrutinib and BCL-2 inhibitors such as venetoclax are two of the most effective therapies used to treat patients with refractory/relapsed mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). However, MCL patients treated with these therapies alone or in combination frequently develop therapeutic resistance, which results in poor clinical outcome. The...

Introduction: Mantle cell lymphoma is an aggressive subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma with poor prognosis. MCL cells display complex inter- and intra-patient heterogeneity and various dissemination patterns involving nodal and extranodal sites across patients. Due to its microenvironment distinct from patients' microenvironments, heterotopic or subcu...

Introduction: Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) patients (pts) who progress after ibrutinib and other lines of treatment "ultra-refractory MCL" have poor outcomes and exhibit BTK mutations infrequently (Jain P et al BJH 2018, Martin P et al Blood 2016). Venetoclax has shown promising efficacy in Phase I trial in NHL (Davids M et al JCO 2017) and is now un...