Boosting CAR-T cell therapies from under the eurekalert.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eurekalert.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
CAR-T cell therapies are transforming the treatment of previously incurable blood cancers, but a large proportion of patients still responds only poorly or not at all to them, calling for new strategies to overcome this challenge. Now, a research team has developed a simple intervention in the form of a biodegradable scaffold material called T-cell enhancing scaffolds (TES) that can be locally injected under the skin and used to restimulate CAR-T cells after their administration. This increased their therapeutic efficacy and significantly curbed tumor growth and prolonged animal survival in an aggressive mouse lymphoma model.
For the first time, researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Genentech<u>, a member of the Roche Group,</u> found a way to enhance and extend LN expansion, and study how this phenomenon affects both the immune system and efficacy of vaccinations against tumors. While the oversized LNs maintained a normal tissue organization, they displayed altered mechanical features and hosted higher numbers of various immune cell types that commonly are involved in immune responses against pathogens and cancers. Importantly, “jump-starting” lymph node expansion prior to administering a traditional vaccine against a melanoma-specific model antigen led to more effective and sustained anti-tumor responses in mice.
Lymph Node Expansion Enhances Vaccine Efficacy miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Each one of us has around 600 lymph nodes (LNs) – small, bean-shaped organs that house various types of blood cells and filter lymph fluid – scattered throughout our bodies.