2020
February
T cells CRISPRed to perfection for attack on refractory cancer
February 26, 2020
Aiming to improve the safety and efficacy of engineered T cells for the treatment of human cancers, Stadtmauer and Fraietta et al. utilized CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to knock out PD-1 (PDCD1) and the endogenous TCR α and β chains (TRAC and TRBC) in autologous T cells that also expressed an exogenous TCR targeting...
CAR NK cells – the newest drivers on the road
February 19, 2020
The powerful effects of CD19-targeting CAR T cells against blood cancers have been well documented in a high portion of treated patients. However, CAR T cells can induce significant toxicities, and the fact that this treatment must be personalized makes the manufacturing process slow, challenging, and expensive. In early results from a phase...
Bispecific antibody 7370: will AML meet its match?
February 12, 2020
In an effort to address the significant unmet clinical needs in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Yeung and Krishnamoorthy et al. developed a novel bispecific antibody that targets both CD3 on T cells and FLT3 on AML cells. FLT3 was selected as a strong potential target antigen, given its upregulated expression...
The holy grail: pan-cancer-targeting T cells
February 5, 2020
The holy grail of cancer research is finding one treatment that kills all types of cancer in every affected individual. With this lofty goal in mind, Crowther and Dolton et al. explored unconventional T cells and identified a T cell clone capable of killing many different types of cancer in an HLA-independent fashion...
