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T-cell research offering new hope for people with difficult-to-treat cancers
T-cell research that began at the UCL Cancer Institute could lead to promising new treatments for patients with cancers that often don’t respond very well to chemo or radiotherapy.
26 September 2023
T-cell therapies are one of the most exciting developments to come about in cancer treatment in recent years. The new therapies harness cells that naturally occur in our immune system, and reprogramme them to fight cancer.
As well being less toxic than treatments like chemotherapy, T-cell therapies can also be used in a more targeted way than other treatments. This could lead to more effective therapies being developed, particularly for blood cancers and cancers that are typically difficult to treat.
The new therapies have been developed using research conducted by Dr Martin Pule and his team at the UCL Cancer Institute and NIHR University College London Hospitals (UCLH) Biomedical Research Centre.
Dr Claire Roddie, who leads the CAR T-cell manufacturing team, explains: “A large focus of our work has been on minimising the toxicity associated with CAR-T therapy... By ensuring manufactured CAR-T cells survive for long periods in the blood, we're hopeful our new treatments can result in long-lasting remissions in patients with otherwise incurable cancer.”
UCL’s T-cell research was commercialised into a spinout company called Autolus in 2014. The spinout process was supported by UCL Business (UCLB), UCL’s commercialisation company.
A number of products are now in development to treat cancers that begin in blood-forming tissue (such as leukaemia and lymphoma), as well as one solid tumour programme.
Read the full story on the UCL Innovation and Enterprise website