Latest T-Cell Clinical Trial Opens for Mesothelioma Patients

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City has begun recruiting patients with pleural mesothelioma for its latest — and potentially most promising — clinical trial involving T-cell therapy. The novel study stems from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recent Investigational Drug Application approval of ATA2271, a chimeric antigen receptor known as CAR T-cell therapy. This latest therapy will be tested in a phase I, dose-escalation clinical trial. It will involve the removal and genetic modification of a patient’s T cells, a type of white blood cell, that will be separated in the laboratory through a process known as leukapheresis. The reprograming will target mesothelin, an antigen highly expressed on mesothelioma cells and other cancers. ATA2271 is designed specifically for treatment of solid tumors. Until recently, various T-cell therapies had been effective only when treating blood cancers such as lymphoma and leukemia. Memorial Sloan Kettering has played a major role in changing that perception. Mesothelioma Study Builds on Prior Clinical Trial The ATA2271 therapy is expected to advance the success already being seen in a multicenter study with an ongoing CAR T-cell phase II clinical trial using a different formula. That study includes Memorial Sloan Kettering. “We’ve taken what we learned earlier and used the knowledge to make this latest therapy more powerful, safer and more important,” Dr. Prasad Adusumilli, thoracic surgeon and scientis...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Source Type: news