Researchers have created a new cellular therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that “targets AML cells without impacting normal blood production.”
The ability to specifically target AML cells is “one of the major challenges associated with AML treatment.” The researchers identified a peptide, CG1, that was “highly abundant in AML and presented on the surface of AML cells by a molecule called HLA-A*02:01. Importantly, CG1 was not present on the surface of normal blood cells.”
Then, they developed “chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells to recognize and attack cells that express the CG1/HLA-A*02:01 complex. CAR T-cells are used as a type of immunotherapy treatment and are highly effective in treating other kinds of blood cancer such as B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma. The therapy involves removing some of a patient’s immune cells (T-cells), genetically modifying them to recognize a molecule on the cancer cell’s surface, and then infusing them back into the patient.”
The CAR T-cells were able to “effectively kill AML samples both in lab-dish models and in mice; however, the CAR T-cells did not kill normal blood cells.” This suggests they could be a “promising treatment for AML.”
