STAT+: Carl June unveils a plan for a ‘universal CAR-T’
Though still in mouse experiments, a new, precise gene editing trick could lead to a CAR-T therapy that could attack many kinds of blood cancers.
The problem with the plan was fratricide, among other wanton cellular murders.
Saar Gill and Carl June, cell therapy researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, wanted to make a single treatment that could tackle virtually all blood cancers. A “universal CAR-T,” they’d call it.
It was an audacious goal. Most cell therapies, such as CAR-T, involve removing a patients’ T cells, arming them with GPS coordinates for that tumor, and then reinfusing them into the battlefield. But different tumors require different coordinates.
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