T cells engineered to home in on brain cancer
Menée notamment à l'aide de xénogreffes de glioblastome ou de médulloblastome sur des modèles murins, cette étude met en évidence l'intérêt thérapeutique de lymphocytes CAR-T exprimant un récepteur de l'antigène tumoral HER2 et un antigène CD6 fixant fortement la glycoprotéine ALCAM pour faciliter la traversée de la barrière hémato-encéphalique
Therapies that activate immune cells called T cells to target tumours are an efficient way to combat many types of cancer1. But an aggressive brain cancer called glioblastoma has proved a particular challenge for immunotherapies2. The blood–brain barrier protects the brain against immune-cell infiltration to prevent the potentially life-threatening effects of brain inflammation. This phenomenon is beneficial in normal circumstances, but it prevents T cells from reaching glioblastomas, making the tumours immunologically ‘cold’3. In a paper in Nature, Samaha and colleagues4 report a way to trigger infiltration of T cells into the brains of mice, thus making glioblastomas vulnerable to immunotherapy.