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