Franziska Modemann

University Medical Center Hamburg - Eppendorf · Department of Internal Medicine II. (Oncology/Haematologie with Sections Bone Marrow Transplantation and Pneumologie)

SMARCA4 (SWI/SNF related, matrix associated, actin dependent regulator of chromatin, subfamily a) is the central ATPase containing enzyme in the SWI/SNF- (switch/sucrose non-fermentable) complex, which regulates chromatin accessibility and thereby influences gene transcription. By acting as a transcriptional activator or repressor in different cell...

Pediatric high-grade gliomas of the subclass MYCN (HGG-MYCN) are highly aggressive tumors frequently carrying MYCN amplifications, TP53 mutations, or both alterations. Due to their rarity, such tumors have only recently been identified as a distinct entity, and biological as well as clinical characteristics have not been addressed specifically. To...

Patients with primary gastrointestinal (GI) lymphoma are at risk of GI perforations. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the prognostic impact of non-traumatic GI perforations. 54 patients with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of primary GI lymphoma were included. Non-traumatic lymphoma perforation occurred in ten patients (19%). Perforations oc...

The zinc-finger transcription factor GLI2 is frequently amplified in childhood medulloblastoma of the Sonic-hedgehog type (SHH-MB), with or without amplification of NMYC or deletion of TP53. Despite the aggressive tumor behavior, tumorigenesis is not well understood, and adequate mouse models are lacking. Therefore, we generated mice with a GLI2 ov...

Pediatric glioma of the subclass MYCN are highly aggressive tumors with a median age at diagnosis of 8 years and a median survival of only 14 months. Molecularly, they frequently carry MYCN amplifications, TP53 mutations or both of these alterations. Due to their rarity, such tumors have only recently been identified as a distinct entity, and both...

Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells) have emerged as a powerful treatment option for individuals with B cell malignancies but have yet to achieve success in treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML) due to a lack of safe targets. Here we leveraged an atlas of publicly available RNA-sequencing data of over 500,000 single cells from 15 individ...

Background Hematologic patients requiring abdominal emergency surgery are considered to be a high-risk population based on disease- and treatment-related immunosuppression. However, the optimal surgical therapy and perioperative management of patients with abdominal emergency surgery in patients with coexisting hematological malignancies remain unc...

Relapse in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is common and is associated with a dismal prognosis. Treatment options are limited and the understanding of molecular response patterns is still challenging. We analyzed the clonal response patterns of 15 patients with relapsed/refractory AML treated with selinexor in a phase II trial (SAIL). DN...

Background While chimeric-antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have revolutionized the treatment of refractory B cell malignancies, they have yet to achieve success in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).¹ In AML, development of CAR therapy is hindered by expression of AML-associated antigens also on pivotal healthy tissues (e.g. hematopoietic...

The majority of publications regarding SARS-CoV-2 infections in adult patients with acute leukemia (AL) refer to hematological patients in general and are not focused on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). We herein report a review of the current literature on adult AL patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Overall, SARS...

Recently new treatments for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) emerged, including regimens like CPX-351 and cladribine with cytarabine and daunorubicin (DA + C), demonstrating improved survival in patient subsets. This retrospective analysis is comparing the outcome of 124 patients treated with cytarabine and daunorubicin (DA; n = 54), CPX-351 (n = 26) a...

Hepatitis E virus is increasingly being reported to cause chronic infection in immunocompromised patients. However, less is known about patients with underlying hematologic disease. In particular, the impact of hepatitis E infection on oncologic therapy has been poorly described. In this retrospective single-center analysis, we analyzed 35 hematolo...

Multiple recent publications have described a highly aggressive subgroup of pediatric glioblastoma, which is clearly separable from other pediatric and adult glioblastoma based on its DNA methylation profile (GBM MYCN). These tumors almost exclusively occur in children and have a median overall survival of only 14 months. Many tumors in this group...

Simple Summary Infections of bacterial, viral, or fungal origin pose a major threat to patients with acute leukemia. Empiric antibiotic and antifungal treatment is a commonly used approach in leukemia patients with febrile neutropenia. To investigate the utility of flexible bronchoscopy (FB) with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) in acute leukemia (AL)...

Background: SMARCA4 (SWI/SNF related, matrix associated, actin dependent regulator of chromatin, subfamily a) is the central ATPase containing enzyme in the SWI/SNF- (switch/sucrose non-fermentable) complex, which influences gene transcription by regulating chromatin accessibility. In solid tumors, SMARCA4 mainly possesses tumor suppressive feature...

Severe infectious complications remain the main cause of mortality in leukemia patients due to a long period of profound neutropenia. Standardized regimens for antimicrobial, antifungal, and antiviral prophylaxis and therapy in neutropenic patients have improved infection-associated mortality. Nevertheless, many patients are refractory to these mul...

Modern cancer therapies increased the survival rates of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients tremendously. However, the complexity of the disease and the identification of new targets require the adaptation of treatment protocols to reduce side effects and increase benefit for the patients. One key regulator of leukemogenesis and chemotherapy resi...

Introduction Selinexor is an exportin-1 (XPO1) inhibitor which forces the nuclear retention and functional activation of tumor suppressor proteins, inducing apoptosis in cancer cells. Overexpression of XPO-1 is common in many tumors, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML). A phase II study, "SAIL", of selinexor with cytarabine and idarubicin in pat...

Introduction: Patients with hematological malignancies and concomitant SARS-CoV-2 infection suffer from a more severe course of their infection than patients without underlying concomitant disease. Similar observations have been made for concomitant influenza infections. The aim of this retrospective study is to compare the clinical courses of COVI...

The severity and mortality of COVID-19 and seasonal influenza were recently compared in the general population but not in patients with hematological malignancies. We analyzed the clinical courses of 79 patients with hematological malignancies and diagnosis of either SARS-CoV-2 (n = 29) or influenza A or B infections (n = 50) who were admitted or w...

The prognosis of elderly AML patients is still poor due to chemotherapy resistance. The Hedgehog (HH) pathway is important for leukemic transformation because of aberrant activation of GLI transcription factors. MBZ is a well-tolerated anthelmintic that exhibits strong antitumor effects. Herein, we show that MBZ induced strong, dose-dependent anti-...

Key Points Patients with acute leukemia present with a prolonged and severe course of COVID-19, which is paralleled by high rates of viremia. Low-intensive chemotherapy seems to be more feasible in patients with acute myeloid leukemia and concomitant SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) is a serious complication after stem cell transplantation and is associated with high non-relapse mortality. If steroid treatment as first-line therapeutic approach fails, treatment options are limited. In retrospective studies, ruxolitinib, a selective Janus kinase 1/2 inhibitor as well as extracorporeal pho...

Aberrant activation of hedgehog signaling (HH) is associated with a wide variety of neoplasms, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The GLI transcription factors are the main downstream effectors of the HH signaling cascade and play a fundamental role in cancer development, progression and maintenance of leukemic stem cells, which are responsibl...