The little secret of cancer cells has been found and can no longer escape the pursuit of anti-cancer therapy!

Antigen chimeric receptor T cells (CAR-T) are T cells engineered to target tumor-specific antigens

Generally speaking, many proteins required for tumor growth are mainly concentrated in the nucleus of tumor cells and rarely appear on the cell surface

However, proteins inside the cell still have a chance to be presented to the cell surface for recognition by the immune system via the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a way that cells have evolved to signal bacterial or viral invasion

In reality, a large proportion of tumor cells rely on genetic mutations to alter signaling pathways, but there are still a small number of mutated proteins that may appear on the cell surface via MHC, giving us an excellent opportunity to help the immune system lock in target

According to a new study in Nature, researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) used this property to create a new peptide-centric CAR-T cell (Peptide Centric CAR-T)

The study focused on neuroblastoma, which is also common in childhood cancers

Study lead author John M.

▲Schematic diagram of the research process (picture source: Reference [2])

After finding these peptides, Dr.

Finally, of the remaining specific peptides, only those closely related to tumor growth and characteristic genes will be retained as final candidate targets

According to the discovery of Dr.

Through a collaboration with antibody research and development company Myrio Therapeutics, they designed a peptide-centric CAR-T that can target this target

Note: The original text has been deleted

References:

[1] CHOP researchers develop a new class of CAR-T cells that target previously untargetable cancer drivers.