New advances in liver cancer treatment! CD147 CAR-NK: Show effective anti-tumor activity.

Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the deadliest solid tumors in humans and there is currently no effective treatment for this type of cancer.
first-line standard treatment drug sorafinib (a multi-kinase inhibitor) is widely used in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, but it has low efficacy and serious side effects.
among the many developing liver cancer therapies, CAR-modified immunocellular therapies are developing rapidly, and one of the major challenges is finding safe and effective targets.
in a study published September 23 in Nature University, researchers from Rutgers University in the United States found that CD147-CAR modified immune cells have effective anti-tumor activity in vitro and in the body.
: Previous studies by Nature Communications have shown that overexposed CD147 (basigin) may be associated with tumor cell migration and activation of extracellular signaling kinase pathogenes.
after analyzing the correlation between patient survival and CD147 expression levels in the Cancer Genome Map Dataset (TGGA), the researchers found a strong negative correlation between CD147 expression and overall survival in multiple tumor tissues.
In addition, the expression of CD147 was also significantly increased in human hepatocellular carcinoma tissue isolated from the patient-sourced xogenous graft (PDX) mouse model, so the CD147 molecule represented an effective target for hepatocellular carcinoma treatment.
, the researchers modified immune cells with CD147-CAR, including progenitic T-cells and NK cells, as well as NK-92MI cells (malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients).
in-body results show that car modified immune cells can specific kill the target cells expressing CD147, and CD147 antibodies block the cd147-CAR-NK-92MI cells specific killing effect.
CD147-CAR-T and CD147-CAR-NK cells specifically killed CD147 and tumor cells in vitro (Source: Nature Communications) In in vivo experiments, CD147-CAR-T cells significantly inhibited tumor size and prolonged the survival of mice, and the weight of mice in different groups was comparable.
Source: Nature Communications CD147-CAR-NK Cell Therapy Similar Effects: Source: Nature Communications To further develop "spot" cell therapies, researchers evaluated the efficacy of CD147-CAR-NK-92MI cells.
results showed that after treating liver PDX mouse models with CD147-CAR-NK-92MI cells, the tumor load in mice decreased, disease progression decreased, survival in mice was extended, and the weight of mice was comparable between groups.
Source: Nature Communications Next, the researchers isolated NK cells from hepatocellular carcinoma tissue, cancerous tissue, and non-cancerous tissue to assess whether NK cells from these patients could kill cancer cells in-body after modification, and the results showed that the resulting CD147-CAR-NK cells were also specific to killing target cells expressing CD147.
: Nature Communications Overall, this study shows that CD147-CAR modified immune cells have the potential to treat patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.
this method can provide treatment options for liver cancer patients, as well as data support for the clinical development of CD147-CAR immunocell therapy for other expression CD147 solid tumors.
: Tseng, H., Xiong, W., Badeti, S. et al. Efficacy of anti-CD147 chimeric antigen receptors targeting hepatocellular carcinoma. Nature Communications (2020)