Mayo Clinic strategy restores CAR T targets on aggressive thyroid tumours

Drugs already used to treat advanced thyroid cancer could help make aggressive tumours visible to CAR T cells , potentially overcoming one of the major challenges of using the immune therapy against solid tumours.

Researchers at Mayo Clinic found that blocking a key cancer signalling pathway can restore a target known as TSHR on aggressive thyroid cancer cells. This could allow specially engineered CAR T cells to recognise and attack tumours that had previously become difficult for them to detect.

In their study , amalgamating the drugs with CAR T therapy produced better tumour control and survival in preclinical models than either treatment alone.

Instead of modifying CAR T cells to recognise cancer cells that had lost their targets, the researchers investigated whether they could instead make the cancer cells display the target again.

We often think about engineering the immune cell to overcome resistance, this work shows another possibility.”