Bifunctional Cancer Vaccine Candidate Concomitantly Defeats and Prevents Glioblastoma

Scientists are harnessing a new way to turn cancer cells into potent, anti-cancer agents. Researchers recently published data in Science Translational Medicine. that showed they had developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system to prevent glioblastoma, with promising results.

Cancer vaccines are an active area of research for many labs, but this innovative approach is distinct.

Instead of using inactivated tumor cells, the team repurposes living tumor cells, which possess an unusual feature.

Like homing pigeons returning to roost, living tumor cells will travel long distances across the brain to return to the site of their fellow tumor cells.

Taking advantage of this unique property, the team engineered living tumor cells using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and repurposed them to release tumor cell-killing agents.

In addition, the engineered tumor cells were designed to express factors that would make them easy for the immune system to spot, tag, and remember, priming the immune system for a long-term anti-tumor response.

“Our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and transform them into cancer killers and vaccines,” said corresponding author Khalid Shah, MS, Ph.D., director of the Center for Stem Cell and Translational Immunotherapy and the vice chair of research in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Brigham and faculty at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Stem Cell Institute, in a related press release.

“Using gene engineering, we are repurposing cancer cells to develop a therapeutic that kills tumor cells and stimulates the immune system to destroy primary tumors and prevent cancer.”

“Our goal is to take an innovative but translatable approach so that we can develop a therapeutic, cancer-killing vaccine that ultimately will have a lasting impact in medicine.”

Shah and colleagues noted that this therapeutic strategy applies to a broader range of solid tumors and that further investigations of its applications are warranted.