Painting a Target on Cancer to Make Therapy More Effective
The combination approach that Lena Gamboa, seated, Gabe Kwong, foreground, and Ali Zamat developed tags the tumors with a synthetic "flag" then uses specially engineered cells from the patient's own immune system to attack the cancer. They found their approach worked against hard-to-treat breast, brain, and colon cancers. it also turned the cancer into an immune system training ground, allowing the body to recognize and fight any tumors that regrow. (Photo: Candler Hobbs)
Biomedical engineers at Georgia Tech created a treatment that could one day unlock a universal strategy for treating some of the hardest-to-treat cancers — like those in the brain, breast, and colon — by teaching the immune system to see what it usually misses.
Their experimental approach worked against those kinds of cancers in lab tests and didn’t damage healthy tissues. Importantly, it also stopped cancer from returning.
While the therapy is still in early stages of development, it builds on well established, safe technologies, giving the treatment a clearer, quicker path to clinical trials and patient care.
Reported in May in the journal Nature Cancer, their technique is a one-two punch that flags tumor cells so they can be recognized and then eliminated by specially enhanced T cells from the patient’s own immune system.