IT immun therapy of TT lymphocytes, which uses a patient’s modified immune cells to find and destroy cancer cells, can produce spectacular results when treating blood cancers such as lymphoma and leukemia and is promising against solid tumors.
But the harvest T lymphocytesA type of white blood cells that helps the immune system fight against germs and protect against diseases, is difficult and costly to limit the use of this potentially vital therapy in the main cancer centers and after other treatments that have failed.
Now, a team of researchers from the Western University box is developing a new device to collect T cells that could make therapy by car cell less expensive and more widely available. The device, called Capglo (for capture and glow), uses a magnetic field to “capture” T cells and visualize them with fluorescent labels that make them “shine”.
The laboratories of Robert Brown, physicist of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University, Susann Brady-Kalnay, biologist of cells, and David Wald, immunologist at the School of Medicine, have reached disciplines and schools to collaborate in this technological innovation.
I hope we could bring the cost of immunotherapy Down, it could therefore be first -line therapy rather than terminal treatment. For some people, it is a curative therapy. For others, it offers significant advantages of survival. We have to make it more accessible to everyone. “”
Brady-Kalnay, Sally S. Morley, Research professor on brain tumors and member of the Cancer Center Center (CCC case)
Capglo should be very inexpensive to make. “If we can really do it, for a few hundred dollars rather than thousands or hundreds of thousands, this is where this treatment reaches equity,” said Brown, distinguished university professor and professor of physics at the Institute.
As a co-leader of the immune oncology program, Wald directs the case of a CCC clinical cell therapy laboratory which manufactures therapies by car cells for patients. He has developed an ultra-fast procedure to establish and develop car cells T in less than 24 hours.
Conventionally harvests T cells
T lymphocytes are extracted from the blood of a cancer patient using the “leukaphérèse”, where the blood is removed and centrifuged to harvest the immune cells, then returned to the patient. This requires specialized equipment, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as the withdrawal and replacement of a large volume of blood.
The cells are then transformed into cancer killers in the laboratory by adding a protein called chimerical antigen receiver or car. These cells called T -car cells – are multiplied in the laboratory and have reintegrated into the patient’s blood circulation in a few days in weeks. The car protein acts as a navigation system to help find and kill cancer cells. For some patients with cancers even very advanced, car cell therapy can eradicate their disease.
CAPGLO would not require more than half a pint of the blood of a patient, the quantity generally necessary during blood donation.
It is not Brown’s first foray into blood physics. He and Case Western Research Senior Research Associate Robert Deissler have developed a technique to diagnose malaria that is based on the fact that blood infected with malaria carries additional iron crystals, which are magnetic. This simple diagnostic tool using magnets to detect malaria in blood samples has earned them a patent for humanity in 2016 of the US patent and brands, a price recognizing the innovators of technology that changes the game that takes world humanitarian challenges.
Using magnets to isolate T cells
For this new project, researchers make T magnetic T cells. Kathleen Molyneaux, a main research partner in the Brady-Kalnay laboratory, covers tiny magnetic balls with a protein designed to hang T cells in a blood sample and bind them to the surface of the pearl.
Then, using Capglo and a magnetic field, Brown and Deissler can separate magnetized T cells from red blood cells and plasma, collecting T cells in a small tube.
In a final step, the investigators plan to cut pearls safely, leaving a population of T cells ready for chimerical transduction in the Wald laboratory. The objective is to take and treat the blood of a patient in an hour, so that the T cells are not damaged.
The researchers received a subsidy from the CWRU Technology Validation and Startup Fund, a program supported by Ohio Third Frontier, to explore the viability of technology.
Source: