Science Advances New Breakthrough: A New Method for Rapid and Efficient Production of Human Immune Cells

A team of researchers at the University of British Columbia has developed a new, fast, and efficient way to produce cancer-fighting immune cells

"We have found the lowest necessary steps to effectively guide pluripotent stem cells to develop into immune cells, especially T cells, in a dish," said Dr.

Last week, Dr.

T cells play an important role in CAR-T therapy, a well-known and successful cancer treatment that involves taking immune cells from patients, genetically modifying them to fight a patient's cancer, and then injecting them into the patient's body to fight the disease

"Because the main cost associated with these treatments is that they are manufactured separately, a more cost-effective strategy is how to use stem cells in the lab to make these immune cells, rather than taking them

Pluripotent stem cells have the ability to differentiate into any type of cell in the body and are constantly self-renewing

Building on previous extensive work in the field, Michaels, Edgar, and a team from Zandstra's lab found that delivering two proteins to stem cells during a critical window of development can increase the efficiency with which immune cells are produced 80 times

The improvement of this production pipeline is one of many steps to address a variety of human health challenges

Dr.

"People have made tremendous progress over the last 20 years and this breakthrough is an exciting continuum,"

The team hopes their new findings and ongoing work in the lab will help the clinical pipeline

Article title

DLL4 and VCAM1 enhance the emergence of T cell–competent hematopoietic progenitors from human pluripotent stem cells