Dr. Scott Lowe, Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program and Scientific Director of the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Cancer Ecosystems Project, co-led a team that developed a new type of CAR T cell that attacks a cell surface protein called uPAR, which is found both on tumors and on cancer-supporting cells in the tumor microenvironment.
SCOTT LOWE
Our research really has been trying to understand the principles of cancer development, the idea that you have to know the enemy if you're going to attack it.
The therapy that we've gotten excited by relates to CAR T cell therapy. We take the patient's own immune cells, engineer them in a lab to hunt down cancer, and then put them back into the body.
And it works really well for blood cancers. But for solid tumors, these are tumors like pancreas cancer, lung cancer. They've been much harder to crack. Many solid tumors build a protective shield of support cells that block the types of car T cells from getting through.
So we asked, what if we could destroy the shield of the cancer and the cancer at the same time?
AVELINE FILLIOL
In the lab, that's exactly what we are seeing happen.
We identified a protein called uPar that acts like a red flag. It appears on cancer cells but also on the supporting cells protecting the tumors.
We then engineered a new type of CAR T cells that recognize that flag and attack every cell that expresses this flag. In the lab, this new approach was surprisingly able to shrink different types of tumors: lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and even ovarian cancer. And even in some experiments we were able to wipe out cells that spread all over the body.
SCOTT LOWE
And so the next step is really to try to develop this for an approach that we can bring into clinical trials and to see if it will be a safe strategy and effective in patients.
AVELINE FILLIOL
It’s really exciting. It’s great to feel like our work matters. And hopefully this will help people.