Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, on Using Armored CAR T-Cells to Tackle Solid Tumors
The chair of the department of medicine at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center discussed the innovations necessary to make CAR-T therapy effective in solid tumor indications.
“I think over the brief 20 year span that I've been doing this work, I think we philosophically kind of changed how we look at [CAR T-cells as cytotoxic agents], and we realized that that the CAR T-cell may be more of a spark rather than the actual explosion. It's the spark that sets off a downstream effect where an immune system that is actually quite reasonably sophisticated in recognizing cancer cells can overcome the defenses that cancer cells create around themselves to stop cell therapies from working.”
Over the past 5 to 10 years, chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy has established itself as an effective treatment modality for blood cancers, with several products having been approved by the FDA for such indications. Although, attempts to apply the same approach to solid tumor indications have proven difficult because of key differences in solid tumor biology. As such, it has become clear that a modified approach to CAR-T therapy will be necessary to make the modality able to provide clinically meaningful benefit for solid tumors. One such approach is the concept of “armored CAR T-cells", CAR-T products that have additional genetic modifications intended to combat cancer cells beyond the use of the CAR itself.
CGTLive® recently spoke with Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, the chair of the department of medicine and the deputy director at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, about how armored CAR T-cells can help bridge the gap necessary to make CAR-T effective in solid tumors. Brentjens pointed out that unlike blood cancers, solid tumors are more complex, often surrounded by nontumor cells that block immune responses. Armored CAR T-cells can reshape this environment and trigger the body’s natural immune system to help attack the cancer. Furthermore, he emphasized that in solid tumors armored CAR T-cells may help address antigen escape, which is typically an even greater challenge for solid tumors than it is in blood cancers.
