CAR T cells tagged posts

Knocking out a protein known to stifle T cell activation on CAR T cells using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology enhanced the engineered T cells’ ability to eliminate blood cancers, according to new preclinical data from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center.

The findings will be presented as an oral presentation at the 62nd American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition on Dec. 7 (abstract 554).

The team knocked out the CD5 gene — which encodes for the CD5 protein on the surface of T cells and can inhibit their activation — on CAR T cells using CRISPR-Cas9 and infused them back into mice with T- and B-cell leukemia or lymphoma...

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...