Major Cancer Breakthrough Could Help More Patients Than Previously Thought
Summary
Scientists have developed a new way to help CAR-T cell therapy attack solid tumors using focused ultrasound to make tumors temporarily show a marker that the therapy can recognize. This method, called SHIFTERS, has shown promising results in lab and animal tests but still needs more work before it can be tried in humans.Key Facts
- CAR-T cell therapy is a treatment that uses a patient’s immune cells to kill cancer cells, mainly used for blood cancers.
- Solid tumors are harder to treat with CAR-T because they lack clear targets for the therapy.
- Researchers at USC created SHIFTERS, which uses focused ultrasound and tumor signals like low oxygen to make tumors show a special marker called CD19.
- This temporary marker signals CAR-T cells where to attack the tumor.
- Tests in the lab and animals showed that targeting tumors this way caused them to shrink significantly.
- The marker only needs to appear on 10-25% of tumor cells to trigger an effective attack.
- The approach is still experimental and hasn’t been tested in humans yet.
- Researchers are exploring how to deliver the SHIFTERS system safely into tumors using methods like lipid nanoparticles or modified viruses.
Read the Full Article
This is a fact-based summary from The Actual News. Click below to read the complete story directly from the original source.
