2020
July
Off-the-shelf allogeneic CAR-T cells one step closer to becoming a reality
July 29, 2020
With many CAR T cell strategies in development and successful trials piling efficacy data, the need arises to make these strategies more widely available. Cell manufacturing is costly and demands highly skilled personnel. Methods allowing a less personalized, but rather “off-the-shelf” approach in which CAR-T manufactured from healthy donor T cells can be...
PRMT5 inhibition warms up cold tumors and leads to PD-1 blockade response
July 22, 2020
Aiming to more fully understand the mechanisms underlying the resistance of tumors to immune checkpoint blockade, Kim et al. explored the role that the epigenetic modifier PRMT5 (protein arginine methyltransferase 5), which regulates processes related to oncogenesis, may play in enabling immunosuppression in melanoma. The results, recently published in Science Translational Medicine, demonstrate...
PD-1 signaling aids in memory T cell formation
July 15, 2020
The PD-1 axis plays an important role in regulating the activation of T cells, and blockade of the PD-1 axis has had profound clinical significance over the past decade. Although multiple studies have investigated the impact of PD-1 signaling during the early stages of an immune response and on the rescue of “exhausted”...
PD-L1 on dendritic cells controls the antitumor response
July 8, 2020
PD-1 axis blockade has been proven time and again to be a successful immunotherapy for a wide variety of cancer types, and it is assumed to work by reversing or preventing T cell exhaustion. However, the exact way by which this cancer immunotherapy works has not been fully elucidated, and recent studies have...
MAIT cells: linking the gut microbiome to antitumor immunity?
July 1, 2020
In patients with colon adenocarcinoma, high infiltration by mucosa-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells – which can be activated by a wide variety of bacteria and recognize epitopes presented by the MHC-like molecule using a limited set of invariant/preferential TCRs – have recently been associated with poor clinical outcomes. In a study recently published...
