Gene-edited T cells for cancer treatment began human trials

CRISPR personalized therapy has made significant progress

Science and Technology Daily Beijing, November 10 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) Non-viral engineered immune cells can be used for personalized treatment of cancer, a study published in the British journal Nature on the 10th, reported the major progress of this modified cell and its human clinical trials
.
The method uses CRISPR genome editing, a system derived from bacteria, to generate patient-specific T cells with good
safety.
Although the current clinical benefit of patient response is limited, this study demonstrates the potential feasibility
of this treatment strategy.

Harnessing the power of the body's immune system to treat cancer is an attractive target
.
T cell surface receptors (key parts of the immune system involved in recognizing and responding to specific antigens) can detect cancer cells because a single mutation in the cancer cell genome changes cell surface proteins
.
Isolate these T cell receptors that can find cancer cells and use them to generate therapeutic T cells, or open up a new way
to treat refractory cancers.

This time, researchers at the University of California and cell therapy company PACT Pharma have developed a method to insert cancer-specific T cell receptors into the T cells of cancer patients using the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system to generate personalized anti-cancer immune cells
.

In a phase I clinical trial, 16 patients with metastatic solid tumors (mostly colorectal cancer) who did not respond to standard therapies were treated with genetically engineered T cells that express personalized T cell receptors
that target individual cancer mutations.
Of the 16 participants, the therapy stabilized 5 and progressed
further in 11 others.
Only two patients experienced adverse effects due to T-cell therapy, while all patients experienced expected adverse effects
associated with concurrent chemotherapy.

The team emphasizes that their method has certain limitations, such as the time required to characterize potential antigens and isolate, clone, and test T cell receptors, and that patient-specific T cell receptors have different affinities with the corresponding
antigens.
They point out that some processes were optimized during the trial and that there is room for further optimization in the future
.