Tail spin: Study reveals new way to reduce friendly fire in cell therapy
A new Yale study has identified a way to tame the self-destructive tendencies of certain killer T cells that are used to treat cancer.
Simply fusing a molecular tail onto the engineered T cells used in therapy, researchers say, can inhibit their proclivity to attack each other. The study was published July 27 in the journal Nature Immunology.
“It’s like putting a sword back in the sheath after it has done its work,’’ said Sidi Chen, associate professor of genetics at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study.
For the study, the Yale team fused CTLA-4 cytoplasmic tails (CCTs) to engineered CAR T cells. CCTs are a portion of a naturally occurring human protein, known as CTLA-4, which is known to keep the immune system in check by regulating T cells. Researchers observed that the cells fused with these tails were less exhausted and survived longer than CAR T cells without the tails.
“The CAR T cells with the engineered tails were less reactive but more persistent” in killing cancer cells, said Zhou, a postdoctoral associate in Chen’s lab.
Chen says it would be relatively easy for existing companies to fuse CCTs to CAR T cells, and that improvements in therapy might help expand treatments to solid tumors as well.
https://news.yale.edu/2023/07/27/tail-spin-study-reveals-new-way-reduce-friendly-fire-cell-therapy
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