Posted on 01/06/2023 1:16:05 PM PST by Red Badger
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found a way to use cancer cells to fight cancer. In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, the team led by Khalid Shah demonstrated that their cell therapy could eliminate established tumors and create long-term immunity in an advanced mouse model of glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. The vaccine works by training the immune system to prevent cancer from returning. These results are encouraging and suggest that this approach may be effective in treating cancer in humans.
Dual-action cell therapy engineered to eliminate established tumors and train the immune system to eradicate primary tumor and prevent cancer’s recurrence.
Scientists are harnessing a new way to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents. In the latest work from the lab of Khalid Shah, MS, PhD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, investigators have developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system so that it can prevent cancer from recurring. The team tested their dual-action, cancer-killing vaccine in an advanced mouse model of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, with promising results. Findings are published in Science Translational Medicine.
“Our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and transform them into cancer killers and vaccines,” said corresponding author Khalid Shah, MS, PhD, director of the Center for Stem Cell and Translational Immunotherapy (CSTI) and the vice chair of research in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Brigham and faculty at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI). “Using gene engineering, we are repurposing cancer cells to develop a therapeutic that kills tumor cells and stimulates the immune system to both destroy primary tumors and prevent cancer.”
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Dual-Action, Cancer Killing Vaccine
Scientists developed a bifunctional therapeutic strategy by transforming living tumor cells into a therapeutic. Shah’s team engineered living tumor cells using the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and repurposed them to release tumor cell killing agent. In addition, the engineered tumor cells were designed to express factors that would make them easy for the immune system to spot, tag and remember, priming the immune system for a long-term anti-tumor response. The team tested their repurposed CRISPR-enhanced and reverse-engineered therapeutic tumor cells (ThTC) in different mice strains including the one that bore bone marrow, liver and thymus cells derived from humans, mimicking the human immune microenvironment. Shah’s team also built a two-layered safety switch into the cancer cell, which, when activated, eradicates ThTCs if needed. Credit: Kok Siong Chen and Khalid Shah
********************************************** Cancer vaccines are an active area of research for many labs, but the approach that Shah and his colleagues have taken is distinct. Instead of using inactivated tumor cells, the team repurposes living tumor cells, which possess an unusual feature. Like homing pigeons returning to roost, living tumor cells will travel long distances across the brain to return to the site of their fellow tumor cells. Taking advantage of this unique property, Shah’s team engineered living tumor cells using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and repurposed them to release tumor cell killing agent. In addition, the engineered tumor cells were designed to express factors that would make them easy for the immune system to spot, tag, and remember, priming the immune system for a long-term anti-tumor response.
The team tested their repurposed CRISPR-enhanced and reverse-engineered therapeutic tumor cells (ThTC) in different mice strains including the one that bore bone marrow, liver and thymus cells derived from humans, mimicking the human immune microenvironment. Shah’s team also built a two-layered safety switch into the cancer cell, which, when activated, eradicates ThTCs if needed. This dual-action cell therapy was safe, applicable, and efficacious in these models, suggesting a roadmap toward therapy. While further testing and development is needed, Shah’s team specifically chose this model and used human cells to smooth the path of translating their findings for patient settings.
“Throughout all of the work that we do in the Center, even when it is highly technical, we never lose sight of the patient,” said Shah. “Our goal is to take an innovative but translatable approach so that we can develop a therapeutic, cancer-killing vaccine that ultimately will have a lasting impact in medicine.” Shah and colleagues note that this therapeutic strategy is applicable to a wider range of solid tumors and that further investigations of its applications are warranted.
Reference: “Bifunctional cancer cell-based vaccine concomitantly drives direct tumor killing and antitumor immunity” by Kok-Siong Chen, Clemens Reinshagen, Thijs A. Van Schaik, Filippo Rossignoli, Paulo Borges, Natalia Claire Mendonca, Reza Abdi, Brennan Simon, David A. Reardon, Hiroaki Wakimoto and Khalid Shah, 4 January 2023, Science Translational Medicine. DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abo4778
Disclosures: Shah owns equity in and is a member of the Board of Directors of AMASA Therapeutics, a company developing stem cell-based therapies for cancer.
Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant R01-NS121096).
My sister had glioblastoma and 8 years later there was no sign of it. Unfortunately she had a stroke due to some complications and in the end that is what led to her death.
Doctors couldn’t believe that anyone lived that many years after diagnosis and then it disappeared.
Ping
8 years is a very long time for GSM. I just saw a website that had the 10 year survival rate at 0.71%. 2 years is called an extreme long term survivor. What a horrible disease.
I want to believe, for the sake of those who are and who will be in desperate need of such treatments, that there are still moral, scientific efforts being made to do what medical researchers are called to do. It’s all so tainted and suspect now, that it’s difficult to be as happy/relieved as I used to be whenever a potential life-saving breakthrough was reported.
My thought process is as follows. I’m here right now, but when my time in the flesh on this earth is over and I’m called to serve Jesus in another way its all good. I do love my life here though🙂
“She has been cancer free ever since.”
God Bless her.
“I want to believe, for the sake of those who are and who will be in desperate need of such treatments, that there are still moral, scientific efforts being made...”
The researchers also have husbands, wives, daughters and sons, some of whom have contracted these terrible forms of cancer. You can bet that they would love to save their loved ones, just as I would have loved to save my wife from ovarian cancer.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they really did develop something that would
“re-tune” someone’s out-of-whack immune system so that it would work like its supposed to?
Not in my lifetime, I’m afraid…
Are you capable of learning things?
Does history have any meaning to you, or does it just start fresh again every morning at breakfast?
Impressive.
“ Don’t trust any Big Pharma. Likely has mRNA buried deep within.”
Big Pharma saved our son in laws life with a new cancer drug.
“Big Pharma” is the best and brightest Americans saving lives.
Do you prefer medicine from 1880 instead?
As I recall this is what took out Freeper MrConfettiMan
Good flick.
Is that you Hannity?
You’re right about that. However, something similar can be said about those who concocted the mRNA jabs and the people with M.D. behind their last names.
You have my deepest sympathy. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to lose a beloved spouse. One of my best friends from high school is currently going through proton radiation treatment which seems to be more precise about killing the right cells, so I’m very grateful to God and for those He blessed with the idea of a more targeted approach in this kind of therapy.
We probably would've found a cure years ago.
“bone marrow, liver and thymus cells derived from humans”
From fetal stem cells? Or amniotic?
Thank you for your kind sentiments, and I hope and pray for great success regarding the treatment of your best friend from high school.
Remember, though, that in the movie “I Am Legend”, the zombie virus was started from a cancer vaccine.
Never seen the movie...................
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