
The labyrinth of jumbled blood vessels in the tumor microenvironment remains one of the toughest blockades for cellular therapies to penetrate and treat solid tumors. Now, in a new study published online today in Nature Cancer, Penn Medicine researchers found that combining chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy with a PAK4 inhibitor drug allowed the engineered cells to punch their way through and attack the tumor, leading to significantly enhanced survival in mice.
The researchers discovered in laboratory experiments that vascularization in solid tumors is driven by the genetic reprogramming of tumor endothelial cells—which line the walls of blood vessels—caused by an enzyme known as PAK4...
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