UCLA scientists make strides toward an ‘off-the-shelf’ immune cell therapy for cancer

Immunotherapies, which harness the body ’s natural defenses to combat disease, have revolutionized the treatment of aggressive and deadly cancers. But often, these therapies — especially those based on immune cells — must be tailored to the individual patient, costing valuable time and pushing their price into the hundreds of thousa nds of dollars.Now, in a study published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, UCLA researchers report a critical step forward in the development of an “off-the-shelf” cancer immunotherapy using rare but powerful immune cells that could potentially be produced in large quantities, stored for extended periods and safely used to treat a wide range of patients with various cancers.“In order to reach the most patients, we want cell therapies that can be mass-produced, frozen and shipped to hospitals around the world,” said Lili Yang, a member of theEli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and the study ’s senior author. “That way, doses of these therapies can be ready and waiting for patients as soon as they are needed.”For the study, Yang and her colleagues focused on invariant natural killer T cells, or iNKT cells, which are unique not only for their power and efficacy but also because they don ’t carry the risk of graft-versus-host disease, which occurs when transplanted cells attack a recipient’s body and which is the reason most cell-based immunotherapies must be created on a p...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news