A breakthrough in the fight against brain cancer

Researchers at HUG and UNIGE have succeeded in generating cells that kill diseased cells. It works on mouse glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma is the most common and most aggressive brain tumour. Current treatments are not very effective: average survival after diagnosis is less than two years. But science is making progress. A team from the University of Geneva and Geneva University Hospitals announced a breakthrough: researchers have succeeded in generating immune cells carrying an antibody that targets the diseased cells in the tumour. These are then destroyed, but only the diseased cells: the healthy tissue is preserved.

Denis Migliorini, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, holder of the ISREC Foundation Chair in Brain Tumour Immunology, member of the Translational Research Centre in Onco-Haematology (CRTOH) and attending physician in charge of the HUG Neuro-oncology Unit, is an expert in CAR-T cells (for chimeric antigen receptors T-cells). This immunotherapy consists of collecting immune T cells from patients, modifying them genetically in the lab to make them express antibodies capable of detecting elements specific to tumour cells, before reinjecting them so that they can specifically target the tumour. 

To check that these ‘healing’ cells only target diseased cells and spare healthy ones, the scientists tested them in vitro (i.e. outside the body). The experiment was a great success. The operation was then repeated, but this time in vivo (in a living organism) on mouse glioblastomas. The growth of the tumour was brought under control, ‘prolonging the life of the mice remarkably without signs of toxicity’, report the UNIGE and the HUG in a press release.

These results, published in the journal Cancer Immunology Research, are a first step towards the development of clinical trials with human patients.

Source: Unige Press Release
📸 DR