Genetic Engineering Publications - GEG Tech top picks

Currently, most people with cancer could be treated with CAR T cell therapy but they don't benefit from it. The main reason is that this treatment is difficult to produce. The average delay between donation and receipt of therapy is more than three weeks. For people with rapidly proliferating diseases, such as acute leukemia, this may be too long to wait. The current technique requires a person's own cells, but the use of cells from healthy donors could allow more people to benefit. However, donor T cells can identify the body of the person receiving the treatment as foreign and attack it, triggering Graft-Versus-Host Disease, which can be fatal, or the foreign T cells can be eliminated by the person's immune system before they can attack the cancer. To counter these problems, biotech company Allogene Therapeutics of southern San Francisco, California, has genetically engineered T-cells to remove a protein known as CD52 from their surfaces. Antibodies that help destroy the cells that carry the surface protein are then administered to the person, depleting his or her own white blood cells that could otherwise kill the modified CAR T cells. And to protect against GVHD, the T-cell receptor on the modified cells can be altered, preventing them from attacking the person's own cells.