New technique could make human T cells 100 times more potent at killing cancer cells

 Originally published by Northwestern University, on February 7, 2024

 

 Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Scientists at the UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Northwestern Medicine may have found a way around the limitations of engineered T cells by borrowing a few tricks from cancer itself.

By studying mutations in malignant T cells that cause lymphoma, they zeroed in on one that imparted exceptional potency to engineered T cells. Inserting a gene encoding this unique mutation into normal human T cells made them more than 100 times more potent at killing cancer cells without any signs of becoming toxic. The study appears in Nature.

While current immunotherapies work only against cancers of the blood and bone marrow, the T cells engineered by Northwestern and UCSF were able to kill tumors derived from skin, lung and stomach in mice. The team has already begun working toward testing this new approach in people.

"We used nature's roadmap to make better T cell therapies," said Dr. Jaehyuk Choi, an associate professor of dermatology and of biochemistry and molecular genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "The superpower that makes cancer cells so strong can be transferred into T cell therapies to make them powerful enough to eliminate what were once incurable cancers."

"Mutations underlying the resilience and adaptability of cancer cells can super-charge T cells to survive and thrive in the harsh conditions that tumors create," said Kole Roybal, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at UCSF, center director for the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Center at UCSF, and a member of the Gladstone Institute of Genomic Immunology.

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