Progress Report: 2022 Snowdome Haematology Fellowship
After being awarded the Snowdome Haematology Fellowship in 2022, Dr Josh Tobin embarked on his research regarding biomarker-directed immunotherapy in advanced stage follicular lymphoma patients. We are pleased to now provide an update on this research.
20 per cent of lymphoma diagnoses are follicular lymphoma (FL) which is currently considered incurable¹. The disease is commonly controlled using chemotherapy, but while many patients experience several years without disease progression, one in four have aggressive disease that relapses rapidly after treatment and is associated with higher mortality¹. Currently, there is no method to reliably distinguish these high-risk patients at diagnosis, something which Dr Tobin ultimately hopes to change through his research.
Since commencing his fellowship, Dr Tobin has been working on the development of an immune-fitness test that can be applied clinically in order to identify high-risk FL patients at diagnosis. Being able to better identify these high-risk patients will subsequently allow clinicians to rapidly deliver precision therapies, matching each patient with the best treatment option.
This research has resulted in a collaboration between 15 sites across Australia and the United States whereby the largest dataset of detailed clinical and imaging data of chemotherapy treated frontline FL cases has been developed. From this, Dr Tobin is testing a new companion biomarker that will help clinicians better interpret positron emission tomography (PET) scans to identify high-risk patients.
Dr Tobin’s research has progressed to examining whether these identified high-risk patients respond more favourably to treatment with novel immunotherapies that act by boosting the immune system to fight against cancer. He is currently reviewing data from pivitol clinical trial cohorts and hopes for publication of these results, alongside an abstract presentation, at the 2025 International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma.
Prof. Richard Boyd, chair of the Snowdome Grants Committee, shared his enthusiasm with the progress of Dr Tobin’s research, saying, “Josh has not only successfully found an algorithm based on the subsets of immune cells in the tumor infiltrate, to identify the most at-risk follicular lymphoma patients, but he has also integrated an evaluation of tumor metabolism, focusing on the level of glucose, any increase of which could drive tumor growth. I look forward to seeing the primary data and trial outcome.”