ABOVE: Researchers used engineered viruses to force the production of the CD19 protein (in purple) on the surface of solid tumor cells in a dish.
CITY OF HOPE
Researchers have been working in recent years to apply the successes of CAR T cell immunotherapy treatments to solid tumors. But breast, liver, brain, and other solid cancers have been less amenable to the approach than blood-based cancers have been. Now, scientists are looking to piggyback CAR T cells with other promising immunotherapies, such as oncolytic viruses, which preferentially infect cancerous cells, to bring the same positive benefits to other malignancies.
A study published on September 2 in Science Translational Medicine details the collective strength of these two immunotherapies to eliminate solid cancers using a protein marker called CD19, which is targeted in CAR T therapies for liquid cancers.
In both human cancer cell cultures and mouse models, solid tumor cells exposed to ...
