Rational development and characterization of humanized anti-EGFR variant III chimeric antigen receptor T cells for glioblastoma
Johnson LA, Scholler J, Ohkuri T, Kosaka A, Patel PR, McGettigan SE, Nace AK, Dentchev T, Thekkat P, Loew A, Boesteanu AC, Cogdill AP, Chen T, Fraietta JA, Kloss CC, Posey AD Jr, Engels B, Singh R, Ezell T, Idamakanti N, Ramones MH, Li N, Zhou L, Plesa G, Seykora JT, Okada H, June CH, Brogdon JL, Maus MV. Rational development and characterization of humanized anti-EGFR variant III chimeric antigen receptor T cells for glioblastoma. Sci Transl Med. 2015 Feb 18;7(275):275ra22 | doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaa4963
Summary
A new study describes the development of a personalized cellular therapy through the design and use of cancer patients’ own T cells engineered to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that targets a mutation found in 30 percent of the brain tumors known as glioblastoma. Immune cells engineered to seek out and attack this type of deadly brain cancer were found to be both safe and effective at controlling tumor growth in mice that were treated with these modified cells, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine by a team from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. “A series of Penn trials that began in 2010 have found that engineered T cells have an effect in treating some blood cancers, but expanding this approach into solid tumors has posed challenges,” said the study’s senior author, Marcela Maus, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Hematology/Oncology in Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center. Co-authors include Department faculty members Drs. Lauren Johnson and Carl June.
Read the Department of Communications news release.
