Team headed by Dr. Renier Brentjens finds reprogramming neutrophils is key to antitumor immune response
- Findings appear in the journal Cancer Cell
- Strategy overcomes challenges of the tumor microenvironment
- Clinical trial planned for patients with small cell lung cancer
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A laboratory study out of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center outlines a new way to boost the effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in solid-tumor cancers, resulting in their eradication. Led by Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Roswell Park and a pioneer in the field of CAR T-cell therapy, the research represents a hopeful new step toward achieving the same success in solid tumors that the treatment has realized in hematological malignancies.
The team, which included first author Yihan Zuo, PhD, and co-senior author Scott Abrams, PhD, is the first to show that CAR T cells armored with the cytokine IL-36 gamma can reprogram white blood cells known as neutrophils to activate an innate immune response against solid tumors. Their findings were published today by Cancer Cell.
“What’s so exciting about this work is that it demonstrates a new mechanism by which CAR T cells can engage a patient’s own immune cells to go after solid-tumor malignancies,” says Dr. Brentjens, who holds The Katherine Anne Gioia Endowed Chair in Cancer Medicine at Roswell Park. “Our findings establish that the IL-36 gamma CAR T-cell platform holds promise as a possible treatment option for some advanced solid-tumor cancers for which there currently are no curative therapies.”
Dr. Brentjens was recognized with the 2024 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for his contributions to the creation of CAR T-cell therapy, which involves collecting a patient’s own immune T cells and adding a specific gene that enables them to zero in on specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells, targeting them for destruction. The re-engineered cells, called CARs or CAR T cells, are then multiplied and returned to the patient to mount a stronger attack by the immune system…