{"id":232078,"date":"2026-02-25T14:21:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/off-the-shelf-immunotherapy-could-get-a-lift-from-gene-edited-natural-killer-cells"},"modified":"2026-02-25T14:21:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:21:26","slug":"off-the-shelf-immunotherapy-could-get-a-lift-from-gene-edited-natural-killer-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/off-the-shelf-immunotherapy-could-get-a-lift-from-gene-edited-natural-killer-cells","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Off the shelf\u2019 immunotherapy could get a lift from gene-edited natural killer cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/off-the-shelf-immunotherapy-could-get-a-lift-from-gene-edited-natural-killer-cells.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since scientists first discovered that human immune cells could be modified to become cancer-fighting agents, they\u2019ve been trying to engineer a cell that\u2019s effective against solid tumors, which account for the vast majority of cancer cases. In a key advance in meeting this \u201choly grail challenge\u201d in the field of cancer cell therapy, a team of Yale scientists led by geneticist Sidi Chen has revealed how immune cells can be \u201cboosted\u201d to target and eradicate solid tumors.<\/p>\n<p>The field of cell therapy began to revolutionize cancer treatment several decades ago, when researchers pioneered the use of therapeutic cells. In this process, immune cells are removed from a patient, modified so that they can better fight cancer, and then reintroduced into the patient\u2019s body.<\/p>\n<p>Two major streams of this therapy exist: <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2023-09-immunologist-breakthrough-prize-cancer-treatment.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">CAR-NK cell therapy<\/a>, which uses a patient\u2019s natural killer (NK) cells, and CAR-T cell therapy, which uses a patient\u2019s T cells. In both cases, scientists genetically modify the cells to express Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR), a synthetic receptor that helps immune cells recognize proteins on cancer cells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since scientists first discovered that human immune cells could be modified to become cancer-fighting agents, they\u2019ve been trying to engineer a cell that\u2019s effective against solid tumors, which account for the vast majority of cancer cases. In a key advance in meeting this \u201choly grail challenge\u201d in the field of cancer cell therapy, a team [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232078","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=232078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}