Experimental cancer therapy, which infuses designer immune cells into patients, showed early promise in a clinical trial by shrinking tumors in the digestive system.
Interim results from the first phase of the clinical trial found that tumors in almost half – 48.6% – of the 37 patients treated so far decreased in size after treatment.
While the findings come from an initial assessment of the safety of the approach, researchers in the Beijing study believe it demonstrates the potential of genetically modified immune cells to treat advanced gastrointestinal cancer.
So-called Car T-cell therapy removes white blood cells or T cells from patients and modifies them so that they can recognize and kill cancer cells. The approach has met with dramatic success as a treatment for blood cancers such as leukemia, but solid tumors have proved more difficult to target.
Writing in Nature Medicine, researchers led by Dr. Lin Shen of the University of Beijing Hospital and Cancer Institute described how they made Car T cells that target tumors carrying a protein called CLDN18.2. The protein is found in many cancers, but especially in gastrointestinal tumors.
The researchers infused Car T cells into 37 patients with advanced cancer of the stomach, digestive tract or pancreas and found that although they all had side effects, the therapy had an “acceptable safety profile.” Treatment appears to be most effective in those with stomach cancer, with more than 57% responding to the infusion.
Researchers emphasize that the findings need to be verified in the full study, but say the interim results suggest that the approach “has the potential to become an important method of treating patients with advanced stomach cancer.” About 6,500 people are diagnosed with stomach cancer in the UK each year, about half of whom are over 75 years old.
Vassim Kasim, a professor of cell and gene therapy at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital, who works on Car T-cell therapies, said the preliminary results are promising.
“The report provides some strong hints that Car’s designed T cells may help shrink stomach cancer, in this case by targeting a flag on the cell surface. “As for other advanced solid cancers, achieving complete remission is a challenge, but experience shows that there is potential for interventions that redirect the immune system against cancer,” he said.
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Prof. Charles Swanton, Chief Clinician of Cancer Research UK, said: “T-cell therapy for cars that use modified versions of our own immune cells to fight cancer has so far had limited success in solid tumors, which make up most species. crab. So it is particularly promising to see these results, which show that a high percentage of people with digestive cancer see the benefits of treatment lasting more than six months.
“This is encouraging, because people with digestive cancer have very few treatment options. The study is still at an early stage and larger clinical trials will need to be conducted before Car T cell therapies can be routinely used in this environment.
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