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Researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a new kind of immunotherapy that uses specially engineered immune cells that attack kidney cancer tumours without the need to customise treatment for each individual patient.
This “off-the-shelf” immunotherapy, called AlloCAR70-NKT, is a type of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T cell) therapy that could help improve outcomes, reduce complications and provide treatment for patients with limited treatment options.
We successfully turned stem cells into powerful cancer-fighting immune cells that can be ready to use for any patient, bypassing the need to engineer each patient’s own cells. This approach overcomes the time delays and safety risks of traditional immunotherapies, especially for patients with aggressive, late-stage disease.
Despite recent advances in immunotherapy and targeted therapies, many patients with metastatic kidney cancer either fail to respond, or eventually their cancer progresses. There is an urgent need for new and more effective treatments.
To address these challenges, researchers at UCLA developed AlloCAR70-NKT, an innovative cell therapy that harnesses the body’s immune system to fight cancer more effectively.
In the study, researchers genetically engineering natural killer T (NKT) cells from stem cells to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that targets a protein commonly found on kidney cancer cells (called CD70).
Stem cells are a special type of cells that are able to make more cells like themselves (they self-renew) and they can become other cells that do different things (differentiation). Stem cells are found in almost all tissues of the body.
These AlloCAR70-NKT cells were designed to resist rejection by the body’s immune system and stay active in the tumour.
This approach tackles a challenge in cancer immunotherapy: developing an off-the-shelf cell therapy that can persist and function effectively in patients without causing serious immune complications,” said the researchers. “Traditional CAR-T therapies often fall short in solid tumours like kidney cancer due to limited durability, poor tumour penetration and immune suppression. AlloCAR70-NKT cells are specifically engineered to overcome those obstacles.
So far, AlloCAR70-NKT cells have not yet been tested in patients.
In early preclinical studies:
- The AlloCAR70-NKT cells directly killed kidney cancer cells
- Disrupted the tumour’s protective barrier made up of suppressive immune cells that shields the tumour from immune attack and helps the cancer resist treatment, and
- Destroy immune cells that would normally reject the AlloCAR70-NKT cells, allowing the therapy to last longer in the body and sustain its anti-tumour activity. Because, the AlloCAR70-NKT cells don’t stay in the body indefinitely, they are less likely to cause long-term immune system problems, such as immune suppression or graft-versus-host disease.
