CAR NK therapy looks durable in a small trial, giving insight into large Takeda study

An “off-the-shelf” cell ther­a­py en­gi­neered us­ing nat­ur­al killer cells re­sult­ed in last­ing re­spons­es in a small clin­i­cal tri­al for cer­tain lym­phomas and leukemia, ac­cord­ing to new study re­sults pub­lished Thurs­day.

The Na­ture Med­i­cine study, con­duct­ed by Katy Rez­vani’s lab at MD An­der­son Can­cer Cen­ter, al­so showed the im­por­tance of se­lect­ing on­ly cer­tain donor cells to use in en­gi­neer­ing these ther­a­pies. The idea be­hind nat­ur­al killer, or NK, cell ther­a­pies is that they can pro­vide a less cost­ly and more read­i­ly avail­able op­tion for can­cer pa­tients, un­like cur­rent CAR-T cell ther­a­pies, which are en­gi­neered in­di­vid­u­al­ly for each pa­tient from their own cells.

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