{"id":152939,"date":"2022-12-16T05:22:19","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T11:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/anti-cancer-car-t-therapy-reengineers-t-cells-to-kill-tumors-and-researchers-are-expanding-the-limited-types-of-cancer-it-can-target"},"modified":"2022-12-16T05:22:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T11:22:19","slug":"anti-cancer-car-t-therapy-reengineers-t-cells-to-kill-tumors-and-researchers-are-expanding-the-limited-types-of-cancer-it-can-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/anti-cancer-car-t-therapy-reengineers-t-cells-to-kill-tumors-and-researchers-are-expanding-the-limited-types-of-cancer-it-can-target","title":{"rendered":"Anti-cancer CAR-T therapy reengineers T cells to kill tumors \u2014 and researchers are expanding the limited types of cancer it can target"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uC16iDy2XoI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So we designed CAR-T cells to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aba1624\">produce IL-2 using synNotch<\/a>. Now, when a CAR-T cell encounters a tumor, it produces IL-2 within the tumor instead of outside it, avoiding causing harm to surrounding healthy cells. Because synNotch is able to bypass the barriers tumors put up, it is able to help T cells amp up and maintain the amount of IL-2 they can make, allowing the T cells to keep functioning even in a hostile microenvironment.<\/p>\n<p>We tested our CAR-T cells modified with synNotch on mice with pancreatic cancer and melanoma. We found that CAR-T cells with synNotch-induced IL-2 were able to produce enough extra IL-2 to overcome the tumors\u2019 defensive barriers and fully activate, completely eliminating the tumors. While all of the mice receiving synNotch modified CAR-T cells survived, none of the CAR-T-only mice did.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, our synNotch modified CAR-T cells were able to trigger IL-2 production without causing toxicity to healthy cells in the rest of the body. This suggests that our method of engineering T cells to produce this toxic cytokine only where it is needed can help improve the effectiveness of CAR-T cells against cancer while reducing side effects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So we designed CAR-T cells to produce IL-2 using synNotch. Now, when a CAR-T cell encounters a tumor, it produces IL-2 within the tumor instead of outside it, avoiding causing harm to surrounding healthy cells. Because synNotch is able to bypass the barriers tumors put up, it is able to help T cells amp up [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}