Our researchers in Italy have made a breakthrough that could lead to better, more effective immunotherapy options for cancer patients. This important discovery involves engineering a specific type of immune cell to target and kill cancer cells. Not only that, it is possible to boost that ability with a drug delivered with nanotechnology to make it even more effective.
We have shown that it is possible to improve adoptive cell therapy with engineered immune cells that have a strong intrinsic anti-tumour activity. We hope we have laid the foundations for an innovative approach of adoptive cell therapy of cancer, hopefully more efficient than the current ones.
Adoptive cell therapy (also called adoptive immunotherapy, or cellular immunotherapy) is a type of cancer therapy that works by harnessing the cells of our immune system to eliminate cancer cells.
This modern treatment approach has proven effective for some cancers such as melanoma, at least temporarily, but it doesn’t work well for many other cancers.
Dr Giulia Casorati and her team at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, wanted to try and solve this puzzle and make adoptive immunotherapy work for more patients. They set out to develop a new technique to make this happen, that would genetically engineer immune cells to recognise and kill cancer cells.
In this noteworthy study, Dr Casorati and team focused on a particular type of immune cell called invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT cells). These cells are a normal part of the human immune system – they combat cancer cells by killing other ‘bad’ immune cells that would help the cancer grow.
The researchers engineered a special version of iNKT cells in mice to be able to detect new types of cells, by adding something called a T cell receptor (TCR). They did so in several mouse models of cancer, including melanoma, prostate cancer, and colorectal cancer.
As they had hoped, this gave the iNKT cells the power to directly kill cancer cells, on top of their normal ability to deal with other immune cells.
In fact, the engineered iNKT cells slowed the growth of some tumours – and even cured some less aggressive ones. But work didn’t stop there. Dr Casorati and her team found that they could boost this effect even further using a known drug called alpha-Galactosyl Ceramide (or alpha-GalCer). This drug was originally derived from a type of sea sponge, and is known to boost anti-tumour immune activity.
To make this approach even more effective, the researchers used nanotechnology to precisely deliver the drug to the site of the tumour, which made the anti-tumour effect of the treatment stronger and helped the iNKT cells do an even better job at killing cancer cells.
With further testing, these remarkable findings could go on to benefit patients with both solid tumours and blood cancers.
In fact, this discovery supports work that is already in clinical trials. This could help speed up the process of making this treatment available to patients.
As for Dr Casorati and her team, their next focus will be to target the treatment for patients with leukaemia specifically. Almost 440,000 new cases of leukaemia are diagnosed worldwide every year, and less than half of these patients survive more than 10 years after their diagnosis. For those that do, many go on to develop the disease again further down the line, so innovative treatments like this that help your immune system hunt down cancer cells could be a new lifeline.
Incredible discoveries like this would not happen without research – and research cannot happen without the support of people like you. If you’re feeling inspired, why not help us make the breakthroughs of the future by donating and starting new cancer cures today?
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