UC San Francisco treated its first brain cancer patient with an experimental new CAR-T therapy discovered and manufactured at the university earlier this year. The treatment, known as E-SYNC, is a form of “switchable” CAR-T therapy that can be turned on and off to better target cancer and reduce side effects. It was designed by UCSF Professor of Neurological Surgery, Surgery and Immunology Hideho Okada , MD, PhD, and Professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology Wendell Lim , PhD. Lim is also the director of UCSF’s Cell Design Institute .
FEATURED EXPERTS
Jennifer Clarke, MD, MPH
Wendell Lim, PhD
Hideho Okada, MD
Although still in early clinical trials, if successful, E-SYNC could one day become the first CAR-T therapy to treat the aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma. About 12,000 Americans are diagnosed with the cancer annually, most of whom die within two years.
UCSF Neurology and Neurological Surgery Professor Jennifer Clarke , MD, MPH, at UCSF’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences , is leading the E-SYNC trial. She explains CAR-T therapy and why UCSF’s new gene therapy holds promise for not only treating glioblastoma but also HER2-positive breast cancer and maybe autoimmune diseases like HIV.
What is CAR-T therapy?
As part of CAR-T therapy, we take a kind of white blood cell from a patient called a T cell and engineer them to attack cancer almost like guided missiles. We do this by adding receptors, special molecules that allow a cell to communicate with its environment and react, on the T-cells’ surfaces. The receptors are called chimeric antigen receptors (CAR), and are built to targeted molecules we know are on the patient’s cancer cells, much like a key fitting a lock, in order to kill them.
The supercharged T cells are then infused back into patients, where the newly added receptors allow the T cells to seek out, find and latch onto cancer cells, killing them.
What cancers can be treated with CAR-T therapy?
CAR-T therapy has been approved for use to treat several types of blood cancers in patients whose cancer has relapsed or is resistant to other standard treatments:
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
Multiple myeloma
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia
