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Engineering strategies for improving adoptive T cell therapy against cancer

All products and services are For Research Use Only and CANNOT be used in the treatment or diagnosis of disease.

webinar recording 10AM EDT, August 25, 2022

The adoptive cell transfer (ACT) of tumor-specific T cells has emerged as a potent treatment against some advanced cancers. For example, ACT of ex vivo expanded tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) has achieved durable and complete responses in about 20% of melanoma patients receiving a single transfusion. In addition, TCR-redirected T cells targeting the cancer testis antigen NY-ESO-1_157-165 have shown important clinical promise against melanoma, myeloma, and synovial sarcoma. Furthermore, ACT with peripheral blood T cells gene-modified to express chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells targeting the B-cell lineage antigen CD19 has led to complete remission for up to 90% of some advanced, treatment-refractory hematological cancer patients.

However, unprecedented responses to CAR therapy have not been achieved against epithelial-derived solid tumors, by far the most common category of cancers. Indeed, solid tumors present a variety of barriers to CAR therapy, including that there is a paucity of tumor antigens not also found on healthy tissues, thus running the risk of on-target but off-tumor toxicity. Hence, both TCR- and CAR-T cells face a range of immunosuppressive barriers in the solid tumor microenvironment (TME), which can be detrimental to their persistence and function.

Creative Biolabs has invited Dr. Melita Irving to join us in this webinar section and discuss the latest findings of her research team on an innovative CAR design, hoping to provide insights into the engineering strategies for improving the efficacy and safety of CAR and TCR cell therapies against cancer.

During this webinar, the following topics were discussed:

The use of syngeneic tumor models to evaluate the ability of co-engineered murine CAR-T cells to reprogram the TME and boost T cell function
The use of low-doses of irradiation to inflame cold tumors and render them responsive to rational combinatorial immunotherapy
The novel STOP-CAR to integrate efficacy and safety directly into CAR design

Webinar Recording

Speaker

Melita Irving, Ph.D.
Group leader, Ludwig Cancer Research, Department of Oncology, University of Lausanne

Originally from Canada, Dr. Melita Irving began working in the field of T-cell engineering for cancer immunotherapy in Switzerland in 2007 and is a group leader at Ludwig Cancer Research in the Department of Oncology at the University of Lausanne since 2013. Dr. Irving's team focuses on the development of tumor-directed TCR- and CAR-T cells that are programmed to logically respond to microenvironmental cues or/and small molecule administration for maximized function, fitness and safety. Her team has optimized retroviral, lentiviral and CRISPR-Cas9 based tools and methodologies, as well as T cell expansion conditions, allowing efficient evaluation of next-generation T cells in the context of both syngeneic and xenograft tumor models.

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