The medical community remains optimistic after a handful of experiments found a way to shrink a persistent and harmful form of brain cancer.
Scientists gathered patients’ immune cells and changed them into “living drugs” that scan and fight glioblastoma. These tests temporarily dwindled the size of tumors, researchers reported on Wednesday.
There have been successful developments to battle blood cancers such as leukemia with CAR-T therapy, but experts have failed to make this method work for solid tumors.
Researchers at hospitals in Massachusetts and the University of Pennsylvania are working to create CAR-T therapy procedures, hoping to cure glioblastoma.
“It’s very early days,” UPenn’s Dr. Stephen Bagley said, but “we’re optimistic that we’ve got something to build on here, a real foundation.”
Glioblastoma is a brain tumor that invades the nearby brain tissue at a fast-growing and aggressive rate. The tumor is normally found in people who are 60 years and older, once diagnosed they live one year to 18 months after diagnosis. This malignant tumor has fewer than 200,000 cases every year. It killed President Joe Biden’s son, Beau, and Arizona Sen. John McCain.
When using CAR-T therapy, doctors can genetically modify a patient’s T cells, which helps them discover specific malignant cells. However, solid tumors such as GBM are difficult to observe because they hold many variations of cells and mutations. Combatting one type of cell does not hinder the rest from spreading.
Massachusets General and UPenn have developed two-sided attempts to fight GBM in patients whose tumors resurfaced after basic treatment.
Dr. Marcela Maus’s lab, at Massachusetts General, mixed CAR-T with T-cell-engaging antibody molecules that attract normal T-cells to attack the cancer cells. Given the name CAR-TEAM, this focuses on EGFR, a transmembrane protein that is found in the majority of glioblastomas.
When Massachusetts General Hospital used the CAR-TEAM method on three patients, brain scans showed that the tumors began to shrink rapidly two days after the experiment, reported the New England Journal of Medicine.
CAR-TEAM was used to test three patients and sent shockwaves to researchers who noticed rapidly shrinking tumors within two days after snapping brain scans.
“None of us could believe it,” Maus said. “That doesn’t happen.”
Two of the patients’ tumors started to redevelop soon after. Another dose did not have any effect on one patient, but another one’s treatment successfully worked for more than half a year.
“Our results suggest that this is a step in the right direction, and this method, when delivered through a patient’s spinal fluid, could be the key to developing therapies that outsmart the complicated defense systems of GBM,” Bagley said in a press release.
Some patients appeared to see tumor shrinkage, while others experienced a quick relapse. Bagley reported that one treated last year has still not experienced regrowth.
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The ultimate goal of the two teams is to ensure glioblastoma does not regrow.
“None of this is going to matter if it doesn’t last,” Bagley emphasized.
