April 05, 2019

Potential progress for Pancreatic Cancer treatment

April 05, 2019/ Robert P. Ruggiero, phd

CRI-Sponsored Trial Reveals Promising Potential of Immunotherapy Combination in Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer

Arthur N. Brodsky, Cancer Research Institute Blog

A novel combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy shows promise as a first-line option in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, according to interim results from a Cancer Research Institute-funded clinical trial that are being revealed today at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR19) in Atlanta.

This phase Ib trial is the first to emerge from the partnership between the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) that was formed in 2017 in order to accelerate promising immunotherapy to benefit the patients who need them most.

In this study, patients were treated with combinations of four different drugs, including two standard-of-care chemotherapies and two immunotherapies—one that inhibits the PD-1 immune checkpoint (nivolumab, BMS) and an experimental treatment that activates the CD40 pathway (APX005M, Apexigen).

New advance increasing the effectiveness of immunotherapies for cancer treatment

March 29, 2019/ Robert P. Ruggiero, phd

Harnessing T-cell “stemness” could enhance cancer immunotherapy

A new study led by scientists in the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) sheds light on one way tumors may continue to grow despite the presence of cancer-killing immune cells. The findings, published March 29, 2019, in Science, suggest a way to enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapies for cancer treatment. NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Dying cancer cells release the chemical potassium, which can reach high levels in some tumors. The research team reported that elevated potassium causes T cells to maintain a stem-cell-like quality, or “stemness,” that is closely tied to their ability to eliminate cancer during immunotherapy. The findings suggest that increasing T cells’ exposure to potassium—or mimicking the effects of high potassium—could make cancer immunotherapies more effective.

Cancer immunotherapy improved with CRISPR

March 07, 2019/ Robert P. Ruggiero, phd

Researchers engineer immune cells to fight cancer

Cancer immunotherapy improved with CRISPR. Genome Media.

Deep in the cells of the human immune system, DNA is constantly being replicated, transcribed and even mutated — but rarely does it change dramatically. Like every other living organism, humans and their genes developed from millions of years of evolutionary pruning.

But to Yale microbiologists, altering the entire genomes of T-cells — the body’s main offensive weapon against diseases such as cancer — is as simple as putting together a Lego set.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Methods on Feb. 25, researchers at the Sidi Chen Lab at Yale have come up with a new way to use the gene-editing technology CRISPR that significantly improves the technology’s efficiency. By allowing scientists to select multiple genes to include in the same CRISPR system, scientists will now be able to edit their samples’ genomes in one go, saving time and money in the process. These findings have considerable promise for engineering T-cells that can fight off cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.

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