Can cancer immunotherapy be improved? – Health and Medicine

2024-03-15 00:57:40

Researchers from the UB and the VHIO lead a project to improve the effectiveness of CAR-T cell therapy.

Cancer immunotherapy is one of the great recent advances in oncology. One of the most promising therapies of this type is CAR-T cell therapy, which consists of extracting a type of patient’s defense cells, T lymphocytes, genetically modifying them in the laboratory so that they specifically attack tumor cells, and injecting them new to the patient. This type of immunotherapy is already used successfully to treat some liquid cancers, such as leukemias and lymphomas.

However, approximately one in two adults and about 40% of children who receive this type of immunotherapy usually relapse. The main problem is the persistence of these modified T lymphocytes. “Patients suffer relapses because, sometimes, the antitumor response does not last long enough,” explains Carles Galdeano, Serra Hunter lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Barcelona (UB).

British researchers have modified immunotherapy with CAR T cells so that they can be obtained from a donor rather than the patient.

“If we manage to optimize the type of lymphocyte populations that we administer to patients, we would avoid their exhaustion and improve the antitumor response,” adds this researcher, who leads a project that seeks to degrade an enzyme that has demonstrated an important role in this type of therapy. .

To do this, they have developed novel molecules that degrade this enzyme during the phase in which the modified lymphocytes multiply in the laboratory, which would increase the effectiveness of the therapy once administered to the patient. Now, together with the Vall d’Hebron Institut d’Oncologia (VHIO) in Barcelona, ​​they will test them on cells from patients and donors.

“The fact that these molecules are not a drug that is administered to the patient, but will be used to treat the cells in the laboratory before being reinjected, favors that their clinical application can be a reality in the short term,” highlights Galdeano. M.B.