Researchers at Texas Children have, in a promising therapeutic case, brought a child’s metastatic cancer into remission using genetically engineered immune cells.
According to ITNA citing Techspot, this method, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, is one of the advanced cancer immunotherapy approaches in which the patient’s own immune cells are redesigned to recognize and destroy cancer cells.
The patient was a very young child with hepatoblastoma; a malignant liver cancer that is seen mostly in infants and children.
At diagnosis the cancer had spread to his lungs as well as the liver. Chemotherapy was given initially, but the disease returned and no longer responded adequately to that treatment.
After recurrence, the child participated in a clinical trial related to T cells. Researchers used his own immune cells and engineered them to target a protein called glypican-3; a protein present in many liver cancers.
These cells were also designed to produce two immune proteins, interleukin-15 and interleukin-21, to enhance the T cells’ ability to kill cancer cells and to persist longer in the body.
After the first infusion of GPC3-CAR, the patient showed a partial response to treatment. Eight weeks later, the second treatment was given and imaging assessments showed the cancer had entered remission.
Follow-ups carried out up to 12 months also showed no sign of disease recurrence.
The significance of this report is that T-cell therapy has so far shown the greatest success in certain blood cancers, and its use for solid tumors has faced greater challenges.
Hepatoblastoma is a solid tumor, and this result could strengthen the course of future research on using engineered immune cells for such cancers.
Nevertheless, this finding does not mean a definitive cure for cancer has been discovered. The current result pertains to one patient, and the efficacy and safety of the method must be examined in larger studies with more patients.
Researchers are now evaluating the method to find more evidence about its ability to treat solid tumors and reduce severe adverse effects.