Patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of lymph node cancer, can survive this disease with chemotherapy, but because of the treatment they are at risk of another life-threatening condition: heart failure. KWF Cancer Control and the Heart Foundation are therefore joining forces and invest more than € 2.3 million for research into a drug that can prevent heart failure as a result of cancer treatment.
Heart pumping power declines
In the Netherlands, approximately 1500 people annually develop diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, the most common form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The chemotherapy (anthracyclines) that kills the cancer cells can save their lives, but in 1 in 10 people, the treatment causes irreparable damage to the heart and heart failure. In heart failure, the heart loses pumping power, but patients do not immediately notice that their heart is deteriorating. Five years after the first hospital admission, 67% of heart failure patients have died.
Thanks to the investment from the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF) and the Heart Foundation (Hartstichting), scientists from UMC Utrecht and Amsterdam UMC - Cancer Center Amsterdam, together with the Hemato-Oncology for Adults Netherlands Foundation (HOVON) and the Dutch Cardiovascular Alliance (DCVA), will be able to investigate whether this heart damage can be prevented over the next 5 years by giving patients the existing drug dexrazoxane before they receive chemotherapy.
More and more people surviving cancer
Lead researchers Anna van Rhenen (hematologist, UMC Utrecht) and Marijke Linschoten (physician-researcher cardiology, Amsterdam UMC): “More and more people are surviving cancer and living longer with the disease. Many people still suffer from the after-effects of the disease and cancer treatment in their daily lives. We hope that with this research we can prevent damage to the heart and thus improve both quality of life and survival.”
If this drug protects the heart well, doctors can also administer the drug in the chemotherapy treatment of other forms of cancer, such as breast cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and acute leukemia. This can prevent patients from dying of heart failure after cancer treatment.
Early detection of heart failure
The researchers also want to find out how they can predict which people have an increased risk of developing this form of heart failure. In this way, doctors can detect heart failure in patients more quickly and prevent further damage with treatment.
New challenges
Johan van de Gronden, KWF director: “Scientific research continues to produce better treatments. Such as with lymphoma, where survival rates have increased sharply in recent decades. But this creates new challenges, such as the possible long-term side effects: with this form of cancer, there are patients with a high risk of heart failure as a result of the treatment. We have an explicit eye for that. Together with the Heart Foundation, we are raising a large budget with which researchers and practitioners will work nationwide on a treatment that is just as good as it is now, but with a lower risk of heart failure. I am proud that donors from KWF and the Heart Foundation enable them to do so.”
Improving quality of life
“With this important research, we can improve the quality of life for this vulnerable group and hopefully eventually even prevent a serious condition,” says Hans Snijder, director of the Dutch Heart Foundation. “It is also good news that we were able to set up this research together with KWF.”
This is a translation of a press release by the Dutch Heart Foundation. Read the original press release here (in Dutch).