Talents
& Awards

Anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) is an aggressive T-cell lymphoma, mainly in children. It accounts for 15% of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas in children and young adults. Most express a chromosomal translocation involving the ALK gene. The resulting ALK fusion protein is the disease-causing oncogene. ALK+ LAGC responds well to chemotherapy, but 30% of cases do not relapse and still have a very poor prognosis (28% survival in case of early relapse, 68% in case of late relapse).

Awarded a grant by the Amgen France Fund, the project led by Dr Fabienne MEGGETTO within CRCT team 7 (RNA biology in haematological cancers) aims to determine whether a class of particularly stable non-coding RNAs, the circular RNAs, can be used as predictive and/or prognostic plasma biomarkers of resistance and/or relapse of ALK+ LAGC patients to chemotherapy, and whether they can serve as therapeutic targets for new approaches

The identification of predictive biomarkers associated with diseases at high risk of early relapse and new drug targets could lead to routine screening by simple blood sampling.