1 week Ago
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute-designated Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECCC) have shown that a breakthrough therapy for treating blood cancers can be adapted to treat solid tumors-;an advance that could transform cancer treatment. The promising findings, reported today in Science Advances , involve CAR-T cell therapy, which supercharges the immune system to identify and attack cancer cells. CAR-T cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma but hasn't worked well against solid tumors.
" Xingxing Zang, Ph.D., paper's senior author "We found that our changes to standard CAR-T cell therapy can significantly boost its effectiveness against solid tumors, including often-fatal pancreatic cancer and glioblastomas.
" Dr. Zang is a member of MECCC Cancer Therapeutics Research Program and professor of microbiology & immunology, of oncology, of medicine, and of urology, the Louis Goldstein Swan Chair in Cancer Research and the founding director of MECCC's Institute for Immunotherapy of Cancer at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The first author of the paper is Christopher Nishimura, an M.
D./Ph.D.
student in Dr. Zang's lab. Dr.
Zang and his colleagues created five CAR-T therapies that they tested on mice implanted with several types of solid human tumors. One of the therapies-;which used two novel components-;proved superior in safely and effectively shrinking not only glioblastoma and pancreatic tumors .
