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Tom van Meerten
dr.

I am a hematologist involved in patient care, clinical and translation research in the field of malignant lymphoma. I focus on translational medicine on diffuse large B cell lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma. My question by all our findings: how does the patient profit or does it help me to treat the patients. The focus of my research group is on DNA repair, cell cycle and cell death. We test novel combinations of existing anti-cancer agents to ultimately improve the treatment of patients suffering from lymphoma. I participate in the organization of new clinical trials both international (European Mantle cell Lymphoma Network) and national (HOVON). Moreover, I am actively involved in clinical trials concerning the application of CAR T cells for patient with lymphoma.

Patients With Relapsed Large B-Cell Lymphoma After 12 Months Have a Similarly Poor Prognosis to Those Relapsing Within 12 Months
Published in: European Journal of Haematology
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CART) has replaced salvage immunochemotherapy followed by high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation (HDT-ASCT) as the preferred second-line treatment for early relapsed (< 12 months) large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). However, for patients with a late relapse (> 12 months), CART is inaccessible until third line. We analyzed 877 patients from the HemoBase registry (diagnosed 2005-2020) to assess differences in long-term outcomes of early versus late relapse in second line. Early relapse occurred in 120/654 patients (18%) who completed first-line treatment, with 2- and 5-year overall survival...
HemoBase Population Registry Consortium, Hilde T van der Galiën, Hilde A M Kooistra, Robby Kibbelaar, Nic J G M Veeger, Marcel Nijland, Gerwin Huls, Tom van Meerten, Rozemarijn S van Rijn
Whole-body CD8+ T-cell PET imaging in patients with large B-cell lymphoma before and during CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy: a phase 2 study.
Published in: Nature Communications
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CART) has revolutionized the treatment of patients with refractory/relapsed large B-cell lymphoma (R/R LBCL). Limited biopsy data indicate that a higher activated CD8 + T-cell density is associated with tumor response. However, tumor biopsies fail to capture the systemic kinetics of CD8 + T-cells. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory phase 2 single-arm trial utilizing a zirconium-89-labeled one-armed anti-CD8α antibody ( 89ZED88082A) to enable whole-body imaging of CD8 + T-cells through positron emission tomography (PET) (NL9034; EUCTR2020-004749-35-NL). Imaging analysis was performed in 23 patients...
Facts and hopes for PET imaging-derived immunotherapy biomarkers
Published in: Clinical Cancer Research
Current immunotherapies have brought major progress in cancer treatments, but not all patients benefit. Therefore, insight into reasons for treatment failure and optimal biomarkers for patient selection are warranted. Current approved biomarkers for cancer immunotherapy do not provide insight into characteristics across tumor lesions in a patient or their heterogeneity. Here, whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with specific tracers may provide support. Moreover, the biodistribution of cell therapies and complex molecules, such as bispecific antibodies, can be visualized by PET imaging, and repeat PET imaging allows to...
High frequency of severe hyperglycemia observed during intensive hematological care: a prospective study using continuous glucose monitoring
Published in: Endocrine practice
OBJECTIVES: During intensive hematological care, patients are exposed to high-dose chemotherapy, corticosteroids, immunosuppressants and total parenteral nutrition. Combined with physiological stress and increased release of cytokines and hormones, this can lead to dysglycemia, which is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. This prospective study aims to investigate continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) to identify dysglycemia during intensive hematological care. METHODS: Patients receiving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, allogeneic or autologous stem cell transplantation (SCT) were eligible. Throughout the study, glucose levels were concurrently monitored using CGM and point-of-care (POC)...
Ibrutinib combined with immunochemotherapy with or without autologous stem-cell transplantation versus immunochemotherapy and autologous stem-cell transplantation in previously untreated patients with mantle cell lymphoma (TRIANGLE): a three-arm, randomised, open-label, phase 3 superiority trial of the European Mantle Cell Lymphoma Network
Published in: The Lancet
Background: Adding ibrutinib to standard immunochemotherapy might improve outcomes and challenge autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT) in younger (aged 65 years or younger) mantle cell lymphoma patients. This trial aimed to investigate whether the addition of ibrutinib results in a superior clinical outcome compared with the pre-trial immunochemotherapy standard with ASCT or an ibrutinib-containing treatment without ASCT. We also investigated whether standard treatment with ASCT is superior to a treatment adding ibrutinib but without ASCT.  Methods: The open-label, randomised, three-arm, parallel-group, superiority TRIANGLE trial was performed in 165 secondary...
Martin Dreyling, Jeanette Doorduijn, Eva Giné, Mats Jerkeman, Jan Walewski, Martin Hutchings, Ulrich Mey, Jon Riise, Marek Trneny, Vibeke Vergote, Ofer Shpilberg, Maria Gomes da Silva, Sirpa Leppä, Linmiao Jiang, Stephan Stilgenbauer, Andrea Kerkhoff, Ron D. Jachimowicz, Melania Celli, Georg Hess, Luca ArcainiCarlo Visco, Tom van Meerten, Stefan Wirths, Pier Luigi Zinzani, Urban Novak, Peter Herhaus, Fabio Benedetti, Kristina Sonnevi, Christine Hanoun, Matthias Hänel, Judith Dierlamm, Christiane Pott, Wolfram Klapper, Döndü Gözel, Christian Schmidt, Michael Unterhalt, Marco Ladetto, Eva Hoster