Because most people are vaccinated against tetanus as children, delivering benign bacteria carrying a tetanus antigen into pancreatic tumors makes them visible to memory cells in the immune system, researchers report.
A trio of papers shows that specialized antibodies can direct T cells to destroy cells that display portions of mutant cancer-related proteins, as well as T cells that have become cancerous themselves.
When tumor cells are infected with an oncolytic virus carrying a modified CD19 gene, they become targets for CAR T cells engineered to recognize this molecular marker.
Injecting immunostimulants directly into the tumor is not a new strategy to stimulate the immune system, but the approach has seen a surge of interest in recent years.