Better, ready-made CAR T cells for cancer immunotherapy
A technique developed by the lab of George Q. Daley, MD, Ph.D., in the Boston Children's Hospital Stem Cell Program, could make CAR T-cell therapy more widely accessible.
It can be difficult to gather enough functional T cells from a patient's blood, and manufacturing CAR T cells for each individual patient is expensive and takes time — time patients may not have on their side. Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), Daley and his colleagues developed a method to make generic CAR T cells that could be produced at scale for use in multiple patients.
While iPS cells are, in theory, a limitless source of different cell types, Daley, first author Ran Jing, Ph.D., and their colleagues had to overcome the challenge of deriving mature, fully functioning T cells from which CAR T cells could be made. In the past, researchers have struggled with this because of the tendency for iPS cells to produce immature, embryonic cells in the Petri dish.
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