Combining CAR-T Therapy with Tumor-Seeking Bacteria

T cells engineered to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) aggressively attack other cells bearing surface markers that match that receptor. This approach is expensive, as it requires engineering cells taken from a patient, and developing CARs specific to each cancer subtype, but has so far proven effective against a number of forms of cancer. Not all cancers are consistent in markers expressed by cancer cells, however, and many cancers exhibit rapid evolution of tumor cell characteristics - only a marginal slowing of progress is achieved when much of the cancer can quickly become immune to a therapeutic approach. In today's research materials, scientist report on an interesting and novel way to make CAR-T therapies both more effective and logistically efficient. The researchers used engineered, tumor-seeking bacteria to introduce consistency into the markers found on cancerous cells, allowing engineered immune cells to more efficiently destroy tumor tissue. Targeting different cancers then becomes a matter of picking the right bacterial species to engineer, most of which are quite capable of seeking out many different types of cancer, as well as adapting to the evolution of a tumor, rather than having to develop new CARs. Engineered Bacteria Paint Targets on Tumors for Cancer-killing T Cells to See For several years, researchers have been successfully using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells to target specific antigens found on blood cells as...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs