Build­ing a bul­let­proof CAR? Sci­en­tists en­gi­neer a built-in PD-1 shield

CAR-Ts won’t be on the mar­ket be­fore next year, but the tech­nol­o­gy arms race in­spired by the prospect of a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar mar­ket has in­spired a group of promi­nent in­ves­ti­ga­tors to de­sign a new, 3.0 mod­el in the lab that in­cludes a built-in check­point mech­a­nism. And it worked like a charm in mouse mod­els of sol­id tu­mors—a crit­i­cal hur­dle that the key play­ers have been strug­gling to clear.

Pub­lish­ing in The Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal In­ves­ti­ga­tion, a group in­clud­ing Juno sci­en­tif­ic co-founder and Memo­r­i­al Sloan-Ket­ter­ing star Michel Sade­lain write about their lat­est ge­net­ic en­gi­neer­ing project with CAR-Ts, the in­di­vid­u­al­ly tai­lored T cells used to as­sault can­cer. The pa­per ex­plores how they tin­kered with var­i­ous as­pects of their third-gen­er­a­tion CAR-T. But the key de­vel­op­ment cen­tered on their use of a vi­ral vec­tor to de­sign a new ther­a­py with a built-in check­point mech­a­nism.

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