{"id":32111,"date":"2017-11-21T16:17:19","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T21:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=32111"},"modified":"2017-11-21T16:17:19","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T21:17:19","slug":"genome-editing-enhances-car-t-cells-to-fight-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=32111","title":{"rendered":"Genome Editing Enhances CAR T-Cells to Fight Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gene<\/a>
(NIH.gov)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

21 November 2017. A process using genome editing is shown to bolster cancer-fighting properties of T-cells from the immune system already modified to attack cancer cells. A team from Cardiff University<\/a> in Wales, U.K. describes its methods in a paper published earlier this month in the journal Blood<\/em><\/a> (paid subscription required).<\/p>\n

An emerging technology for cancer treatments uses T-cells,\u00a0white blood\u00a0 cells from the patient\u2019s immune system, genetically engineered to express\u00a0chimeric antigen receptor<\/a>\u00a0proteins. The therapies reprogram the T-cells with genetic engineering to find and kill cancer cells\u00a0like an antibody. <\/span>These modified chimeric antigen receptor or CAR T-cells are infused back into the patient, seeking out and binding to targeted proteins found on the surface of B cells \u2014 another type of white blood cell \u2014 associated with several types of blood-related cancers. <\/span><\/p>\n

CAR T-cells are being tested in clinical trials among patients who do respond to conventional treatments for a number of blood-related cancers, which report remission rates as high as 90 percent. In August 2017,\u00a0FDA approved<\/a>\u00a0the first CAR T-cell treatments in the U.S. for patients with a form of stubborn or relapsing acute lymphoblastic leukemia. As reported in Science & Enterprise<\/a>, researchers are also adapting these techniques to solid tumor cancers.<\/p>\n

A team from the Cardiff lab of immunologist Andrew Sewell<\/a> is seeking better methods for finding and attacking cancer cells with CAR T-cells. In some cases, a patient’s T-cells have limited capacity for adding additional receptors, which also limits their therapeutic ability. Project leader Mateusz Legut<\/a> and colleagues looked to the genome editing technique known as Crispr<\/a>, for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, as a way to add more capacity to T-cells.<\/p>\n

For their genome editing, the researchers used an enzyme known as Crispr-associated protein 9 or\u00a0<\/span>Cas9<\/a>. RNA molecules guide the Cas9 editing enzyme to specific genes needing the fix. “The T-cells we made using genome editing do not have any of their own T-cell receptors left,” says Legut in a university statement, “and therefore the only receptor they can use is the one specific for cancer.”<\/p>\n

The team tested the engineered and genome-edited T-cells on blood cancer cell lines from patients, and compared the results to modified T-cells for therapy without genome editing. The genome-edited CAR T-cells, say the authors, express many more transgenic T-cell receptors, which strengthens their cancer-fighting ability. In their tests, the genome-edited T-cells are shown to be much more sensitive to their antigen targets than the non-edited cells. “As a result,” notes Legut “these cells can be a thousand times better at seeing and killing cancer than the cells prepared using the current methodology.”<\/p>\n

The authors conclude the combination of CAR T-cells and genome editing opens the door to a new type of cancer immunotherapy. Cardiff hematologist and co-author Oliver Ottmann adds, “I believe that our improved method of making cancer-specific T-cells will guide a new generation of clinical trials and be used by researchers in the laboratory to discover new cancer-specific T-cell receptors and new targets for cancer therapy.”<\/p>\n

More from Science & Enterprise:<\/p>\n