US researchers develop innovative, cost-effective CAR-NKT immunotherapy for ovarian cancer
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently published promising findings of a new immunotherapy for ovarian cancer in Med journal. Tested on 35 high-grade serous ovarian patient-derived tumour samples the new treatment using CAR-NKT cells. These CAR-NKT cells destroyed the cancer cells in all samples, including samples derived from those newly diagnosed and also from patients with recurrent disease.
Reading time: 2.5 minutes
You may have heard of CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor) immunotherapies, which have changed the treatment landscape in other cancers like blood cancers but have so far been ineffective for ovarian cancer treatment. However here, instead of attaching the CARs to immune cells called T-cells, the researchers engineered them with another type of immune cell called ‘natural killer T-cells’ (NKT cells) which are better at targeting only cancerous cells and not healthy cells.
The CAR-NKT approach appears to outperform CAR-T cell immunotherapy in ovarian cancer because CAR-NKT cells use multiple anti-tumour mechanisms and target several markers, including on the surface of ovarian cancer cells. This limits the ability of cancer cells to adapt and become resistant, whereas CAR-Ts generally target only one marker on cancer cells.
What makes this news exciting is that not only have the researchers developed a more effective immunotherapy, they have also developed a platform that manufactures it more economically and accessibly than current CAR-T therapies.
CAR-T cells are made by extracting a patient’s own T cells, which are then engineered in the laboratory to target cancer before being returned to into the patient’s body. This can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient. However, because the CAR-NKT immunotherapies rely on a different type of immune cell (natural killer T cells), they are less likely to trigger immune rejection between individuals and therefore they don’t need to be sourced from each specific patient. This means they can be mass-produced more economically as an ‘off-the-shelf’ product, reducing both cost (around US$5,000 per dose) and wait time between clinicians prescribing the treatment and patients receiving it.
This publication reflects over a decade of research and now the team hope to receive US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in order to progress to clinical trials. One of the lead researchers, Dr Sanaz Memarzadeh, explained that they went into research after early clinical experience opened their eyes to the need for more effective ovarian cancer treatments, and it is wonderful to see this ambition coming to life.
Get the latest news, stories & updates.
