In the cutting-edge cancer treatment known as CAR T cell therapy, some of a patient’s immune cells are removed and engineered to express a synthetic CAR receptor that allows the cells to latch onto and destroy cancer cells. With a new method developed in mice, CAR T cells can now be made in vivo, without removing and re-transfusing cells—and then used to treat a very different condition. In the mice, the CAR T cells targeted wound-healing cells called fibroblasts and thus reduced the formation of scar tissue on the heart. The results are reported today (January 6) in Science.
The ability to generate CAR T cells in vivo “now makes every center in the United States that can handle a syringe a potential treatment place,” Jeffery Molkentin, a molecular biologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital who was not involved in the study, tells The Scientist. “If this is used for cancer ...
