Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have tested a new cellular immunotherapy whereby they engineered normal white blood cells (lymphocytes) from each patient to produce receptors that recognize and attack their specific cancer cells. Reported in Nature Medicine, the interim data in the phase II trial of people…

Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine have shown that although the risk for secondary T-cell lymphoma is low after CAR T cell therapy, it is not nonexistent, and clinicians should be aware that patients may be susceptible to this outcome. CAR T cell therapy is an…

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…

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a new treatment method using a nanocapsule to deliver the enzyme lactate oxidase into solid tumors, improving anti-tumoral immune response and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy efficacy.Reporting in Science Translational Medicine, scientists are targeting lactate—a chemical produced by cancer cells…

New findings may explain why some children with leukemia have a longer remission than others after having CAR T-cell therapy. Researchers at University College London (UCL), Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute identified a unique signature in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells that are long lasting—a key…

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…

London-based biotech Quell Therapeutics can now advance its T regulatory (Treg) cell therapies to the next stage with proceeds from its oversubscribed $156M Series B funding round. Quell was founded in 2019 based on research from Kings College, UCL and Hannover Medical School, with a $45M Series A launch, including…

The FDA has granted approval for Kite’s Tecartus (brexucabtagene autoleucel) for the treatment of adult patients (18 years and older) with relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Tecartus is the first and only chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy approved for adults (18 years and older) with…

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a form of cancer immunotherapy that uses cancer-killing natural killer (NK) cells genetically engineered outside the body to target and destroy cancer cells, including solid tumor types. Their in vitro studies showed that these chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered NK cells can differentiate between cancer…

A two-step positive-feedback circuit allows CAR-T cells to better discriminate solid tumor cancer targets, according to a new international study. CAR-T cell therapy is a type of treatment in which a patient’s T cells are changed in the laboratory so they will attack cancer cells. CAR-T cell therapy is used…