The combination of two chemotherapeutic agents reduces the growth of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma cells in a mouse model and in patients’ cells in culture. These findings, reported in Nature Communications this week, suggest that this combination therapy may be useful in treating patients with this disease.

Ronald Gartenhaus and colleagues detected the elevated expression of the DNA damage associated protein Chk2 in human diffuse large B-cell lymphoma cells and found that this correlated with the expression of another protein, ERK1/2. Using inhibitors that target the two proteins, they found that the dual treatment of primary human cancer cells induced cell death and that these chemicals also blocked tumour growth in a mouse model. This suggested that the dual treatment of the cells was more effective than the single treatment.

These findings suggest that this may be a useful approach for targeting diffuse B-cell lymphoma in the clinic.