Over the past 30 years, there has been very little improvement in the survival rates of children and young people with solid cancers. Now, a global team of researchers aims to change that.
A pioneering test of Great challenges of cancer The NexTGen team is testing whether their cutting-edge new therapy can help treat children and young people with solid tumors by harnessing the immune system.
NextGen is an international team co-funded by Cancer Research UK, the US National Cancer Institute and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. The team includes researchers from across the UK, US and France, collaborating to explore new forms of a type of immunotherapy called CAR-T cell therapy to help children and young people.
The UK arm of the team’s new trial, MIGHTY, will test CAR-T cell therapies designed specifically for children and young people with sarcomas.
Breaking barriers
CAR-T cell therapy is a highly advanced and personalized cancer treatment. It works by taking the patient’s own immune cells, called T cells, and altering them in the laboratory so they can better recognize and destroy cancer cells. This approach has been transformative for people with certain types of blood cancer, but it doesn’t work for everyone and has faced problems when it comes to other types of cancer.
Treating solid tumors with T cells is especially challenging. Unlike blood cancers, solid tumors form dense lumps that can create a physical barrier to medications and immune cells trying to reach the tumor cells. These tumors can also change the environment around them, known as the microenvironment, to help them hide from the immune system or weaken the immune cells that try to stop them.
The NexTGen team is developing new ways to address this challenge. They have developed a new way to modify T cells to resist the tumor microenvironment and recognize a protein called B7-H3, which is found in most solid tumors in children and young people. Recognizing this protein allows T cells to attach to cancer cells and kill them.
Difficult tumors are not the only problem that children and young people with cancer face. Children and young people have far fewer treatment options available and most of these treatments are designed for adults, which can cause more serious side effects in younger bodies.
“Cancers in children and young people are fundamentally different from those in adults,” said Dr. Karin Straathof, a member of the NexTGen team and principal investigator of the MIGHTY trial. “They are unique in how they develop, how they resist treatment and where their vulnerabilities lie. Therefore, treatments should be differentOh.
“We urgently need to stop simply repurposing adult cancer drugs and focus on developing treatments specifically for younger patients: interventions that not only improve survival but also protect their long-term quality of life. We look forward to seeing the results of this important study.”