(l-r) Dr. Sofi Yado, Prof. Benny Geiger, Dr. Shlomit Reich-Zeliger and Rawan Zoabi (Weizmann Institute)
A groundbreaking new method developed at the Weizmann Institute has the potential to revolutionize cancer immunotherapy. This innovative approach significantly boosts the growth rate of immune cells that target cancer while preserving their crucial ability to destroy tumor cells.
Researchers from Prof. Benny Geiger’s laboratory in the Immunology and Regenerative Biology Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a new approach that induces an increase in T-cell proliferation while maintaining or even enhancing the cells’ killing prowess.
Cellular immunotherapy is a promising new cancer treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to fight the disease. In this approach, doctors take a sample of T-cells, which are specialized white blood cells that help fight infection, from the patient. These T-cells are then activated in the laboratory and multiplied into a large army of cancer-killing cells. Finally, the activated T-cells are injected back into the patient, where they seek out and destroy cancer cells.
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In the new study, published recently in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer (JITC), the researchers examined two different methods of activating T-cells – with and without the presence of the synthetic immune niche – and made discoveries that could have significant ramifications for the future of cellular immunotherapy. Also participating in the study, which was led by Dr. Sofi Yado from Geiger’s group, were Rawan Zoabi (also from Geiger’s group), Dr. Shlomit Reich-Zeliger from Friedman’s group and Dr. Bareket Dassa from Weizmann’s Life Sciences Core Facilities Department.
“Nir and I had approached this project based on our shared interest in the influence of the tumor environment on cellular activity,” Geiger explains. “Nir’s contribution was enormous, including developing and applying computational methods and models for tracing the behavior of individual T-cells, while my lab had acquired a great deal of experience in characterizing the interaction between living cells and their environment. When we started, we were trying to find the right ‘recipe’ for the immune niche, and we decided to look for a specific combination of natural immune system proteins that, when introduced into the synthetic niche, would improve the performance of the T-cells and potentially boost the effectiveness of cellular immunotherapy.
The Weizmann Institute team took out a patent on the synthetic immune niche, which so far has been tested primarily in experiments with mice. They then initiated collaborative studies with researchers from Israeli hospitals and the medical industry, in the hope of exploring a similar system for human cells. Over the past few months, thanks to data collected in their follow-up studies, they launched a collaboration with the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, to explore the feasibility of using the system in treating patients.
“Treatment based on cellular immunotherapy has produced highly promising results, and it holds great potential for battling cancer,” Geiger says. “But its broad applicability and effectiveness need additional reinforcement, in part because of the need to find the right balance between the number of cells available for treatment and their killing power. The immune niche that we developed can significantly increase both. If it proves effective in enhancing cancer immunotherapy for humans, it could provide new horizons for patients who currently do not have any effective treatment options.”
