{"id":241641,"date":"2026-07-27T16:10:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T21:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/inherited-gene-variants-may-shape-car-t-therapy-benefits-and-toxic-side-effects"},"modified":"2026-07-27T16:10:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T21:10:31","slug":"inherited-gene-variants-may-shape-car-t-therapy-benefits-and-toxic-side-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/inherited-gene-variants-may-shape-car-t-therapy-benefits-and-toxic-side-effects","title":{"rendered":"Inherited gene variants may shape CAR-T therapy benefits and toxic side effects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/inherited-gene-variants-may-shape-car-t-therapy-benefits-and-toxic-side-effects2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, which reprograms an individual\u2019s immune cells to seek out and destroy certain cancer cells, has revolutionized treatment for blood cancers such as lymphoma. But in some patients, the treatment can cause serious side effects. New research led by investigators at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has shown that patients\u2019 inherited genetic makeup can influence whether they benefit from CAR-T cell therapy or experience toxicity from the treatment. The results are <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/sciimmunol.aef4134\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Science Immunology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese findings have important implications for understanding how CAR-T cells behave in patients since each CAR-T cell product is unique to the person from whom it is manufactured, unlike all prior forms of therapy, which are identical across patients,\u201d said lead author Mark B. Leick, M.D., an oncologist at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute.<\/p>\n<p>For the study, Leick and his colleagues sequenced the entire genomes of more than 200 patients with aggressive lymphoma from two major clinical trials of CAR-T cell therapy. In one of the trials, patients with T cells with variants that silenced the STXBP2 gene tended to experience toxicity related to CAR-T cell therapy. Also, donor T cells engineered to lack STXBP2 and\/or express these STXBP2-silencing variants triggered inflammation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, which reprograms an individual\u2019s immune cells to seek out and destroy certain cancer cells, has revolutionized treatment for blood cancers such as lymphoma. But in some patients, the treatment can cause serious side effects. New research led by investigators at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241641","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=241641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}