A Phase I trial led by the Baylor College of Medicine shows an autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for treatment of advanced HER2-specific sarcoma was beneficial in 50% of patients in the trial. Lower-level cytokine release syndrome was fairly common in the study, but only two individuals had…

Researchers at City of Hope report the first-ever chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell treatment of recurrent brain tumors delivered directly to the tumor, bypassing the protective blood-brain barrier. The study marks the completion of the largest Phase I clinical trial to date for any solid tumor type. “We’re going after…

A chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with a new cellular binding mechanism targeting CD19 has achieved good results in a Phase I trial in patients with relapsed or refractory B cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As reported in the journal Molecular Cancer, the new therapy had an overall response rate of…

Immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies have revolutionized the field of oncology over the last few years, but they are just the beginning. A new wave of immunotherapies is now hitting the clinic. In 2022, Immunocore’s tebentafusp (Kimmtrak) was the first TCR anti-cancer therapy…

Cell and gene therapy have surprisingly long histories. Cell therapy has existed in the form of bone marrow transplant, used to treat cancers and other conditions, since the late 1950’s, although it only came to prominence with the approval of the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell cancer therapies (Kymriah…

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a universal receptor system that allows T cells to recognize any cell surface target, providing the possibility for tailored CAR T cell and other immunotherapies used to treat diseases such as cancer. T cell therapies, especially those involving CAR T cells are…

An “off-the-shelf” allogeneic CAR T-cell therapy, developed by Allogene Therapeutics and tested by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, showed promising results in a Phase I trial to treat patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma. The advent of immunotherapy revolutionized cancer treatment. Combined gene and cell…

At Penn Medicine, a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been developed that can kill tumor cells in mouse models of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and gastrointestinal cancers (GICs) with no obvious toxicity or off target effects. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapies have shown that they can take on blood…

A novel immunotherapy strategy that generates transient engineered chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells in the body can reduce scarring and restore cardiac function in a mouse model of heart failure, according to research led by the University of Pennsylvania. The experimental immunotherapy approach is based on the delivery of modified…

Data from three separate clinical studies, released at the American Society Hematology (ASH) conference in December by researchers from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, showed enhanced response in patients with high-risk lymphoma when treated with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Axi-cel is an autologous anti-CD19 CAR…

Researchers at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified an enzyme that saps the energy of T cells once they have infiltrated a solid tumor and prevents them from effectively combatting cancer. The team found that the metabolic enzyme, called Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase (ACC) is turned “on” in the tumor…

When Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold was unveiled in 2020, the new protein structure prediction program was hailed as a breakthrough that could serve as a magic bullet for the high costs and dismal failure rates in drug discovery and development. AlphaFold uses an end-to-end deep neural network trained to produce protein…

In 2013, much of the world was introduced to the burgeoning field of precision medicine when world-famous actress, Angelina Jolie, announced she had undergone a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer. With that announcement, things like BRCA genes, mutations, and proteins were thrust onto the public…

Even standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology should, in principle, boost weak mutant signals so that they may emerge from all the genomic noise emitted by wild-type sequences. Yet standard PCR, for all its sequence-amplifying and signal-boosting powers, is still a qualitative technique.  That is, it can indicate only if…

A research study led by the University of Kansas suggests that the FDA-mandated monitoring period of diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients receiving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy could be halved without harm to patients. Writing in the journal Blood Advances, first author Nausheen Ahmed, a researcher and hematologist…