Light regulated car-t therapy can effectively kill skin cancer

Recently, bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a control system that makes car T-cell therapy safer and more effective in treating cancer By programming car T cells to be activated by blue light, researchers can precisely control T cells to destroy mouse skin tumors without damaging healthy tissues In mouse tests, engineered car T cells were shown to reduce skin tumor size by eight to nine times When there is no external light source, the modified car T cells will not inhibit the growth of tumor The work was published in science advance on February 19 Chimeric antigen receptor (car) T cell therapy is a new cancer immunotherapy By collecting T cells from patients and genetically engineering them, we can make them express special receptors that can recognize target cancer cell antigens Then, the modified T cells were injected into the patient's body to target and attack the tumor cells with target antigens on the surface Although this method is effective for some types of blood cancer and lymphoma, it has not been effective for solid tumors so far One reason is that many solid tumor antigens are also expressed in healthy cells Yingxiao Wang, Professor of bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, said: "it is very difficult to identify solid tumor antigen molecules with high specificity at present, so that car T cells can only target tumor sites of these lesions without attacking normal organs and tissues Therefore, car-t therapy urgently needs to design car T cells that can be controlled in space and time with high precision ”To create such cells, Wang and his team have installed a switch that enables them to activate car T cells at specific locations in the body The switch uses two engineered proteins located inside car T cells that bind when exposed to blue light pulses Once combined, these proteins trigger antigen-targeted receptor expression Since light cannot penetrate into the human body, Wang believes that this method can be used to treat solid tumors near the skin surface For further research, Wang hopes to work with clinicians to test patients with melanoma.