Personalized T cell immunotherapy for pediatric brain tumors is one step closer to becoming a reality

Recent popular reports from Yimaike ★ Invitation Letter2021 CSGCT Gene and Cell Therapy Medical Summit is about to be held in Shanghai ★ Mustang Biology develops RAG1 immunodeficiency disease and obtains the first exclusive authorization of in vitro lentiviral gene therapy November 23, 2021 / Yimai Ke News eMedClub News/--Medulloblastoma is a common brain tumor in children, once it spreads, it becomes particularly difficult to treat
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In order to find immunotherapies that may bring hope to these young patients, scientists at the National Children's Hospital in Washington, DC used a specific type of DNA analysis to design a new therapy that has shown promising efficacy in preclinical studies
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The team identified peptides specific to medulloblastoma, and then modified the T cells so that they could recognize and target these proteins
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They reported in Nature Communications that these modified T cells eliminated medulloblastoma cells in the test tube
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From an immunotherapy perspective, tumor specificity is important because when clinicians treat patients with T cell therapy, they want to ensure that T cells directly target and kill the tumor without causing destructive damage to healthy cells
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This paper proves that using this new method may produce better efficacy and safety
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The researchers first patient samples for DNA sequencing analysis of all the proteins that affect tumor biology of cancer - they explained in a statement from the Children's Society said, this process is called "low input protein genomics"
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Then, the researchers developed T cells that target specific proteins or neoantigens in each sample.
These samples are unique to cancer and do not exist in healthy cells.

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Tumor cells usually have mutations when they copy DNA.
These mutated genes produce abnormal proteins.
These proteins are unique for every cancer patient
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In order for this process to work properly, researchers must develop a technique to filter normal peptides
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The first author, Dr.
Samuel Rivero-Hinojosa, a scientist at the National Children’s Fund, said in a statement: “Targeting antigens that are completely specific to tumors and not expressed in other parts of the body may enhance the strength of antigen-specific T cell products.
At the same time reduce toxicity
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"Personalized CAR-T Therapy Personalized CAR-T Therapy has been proven to be effective for blood cancer, but it has not been successfully transformed into the treatment of solid tumors
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Several techniques for adapting this technique to brain tumors are currently being studied
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Canadian scientists reported last year that they had developed a CAR-T that targets CD133, also known as prominin-1, a protein on neural stem cells found in some brain tumors
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The therapy was developed by the start-up company Empirica Therapeutics
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In April of this year, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco described a method they developed: They developed armed T cells to target solid tumors (including glioblastoma) through molecular circuits.
), these molecular circuits can cause cancer cells to be killed by T cells
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The National Children's Hospital team hopes to design a clinical trial during which they will extract T cells from medulloblastoma patients, train them to recognize unique tumor neoantigens, and then reinject them into patients
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Reference materials: 1.
https:// discovery of neoantigens facilitates personalized multi-antigen targeted T cell immunotherapy for brain tumors DOI: 10.
1038 / s41467-021-26936-y