AI Summary
Researchers at the University of Freiburg have found a way to prevent exhaustion in CAR-T cells, improving the effectiveness of this last-hope therapy for cancer patients. CAR-T cells are immune cells that are genetically engineered to identify and kill cancer cells. This discovery could significantly improve the outcomes of CAR-T cell therapy.
CAR-T cell therapy is a last hope for many patients with blood, bone marrow or lymph gland cancer when other treatments such as chemotherapy are unsuccessful. A limiting factor of this otherwise very effective and safe therapy is that the cells used in the process quickly reach a state of exhaustion. Researchers at the University of Freiburg have now been able to prevent this exhaustion and thus significantly improve the effect of the therapy in a preclinical animal model. The new results have been published in the journal Nature Immunology.
Using the body’s own defenses against cancer
CAR-T cells are one of the personalised cancer therapies and have been used in specialised centres in Europe since 2018. In this complex treatment, immune cells, or more precisely T cells, are taken from the blood of cancer patients, genetically engineered in the laboratory with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and then re-administered. The receptor helps the T cells to identify and kill cancer cells. As a result, the therapy utilises the body’s own cells to permanently eradicate the cancer.
A simplified T-cell receptor
The CAR functions like a sensor with which the T cell recognises characteristic surface features of cancer cells. The synthetic CAR consists in part of elements of the natural T cell receptor, but its structure is greatly simplified in comparison. The CAR has only one of the four different subunits that transmit the signals that trigger the activation of the immune response in unmodified T cells.
“The CARs