Programming the immune system to supercharge cancer cell therapies

The first FDA-approved gene therapies are living drugs: immune cells taken from cancer patients engineered to target tumor cells. However, for many patients, these advanced therapies do not result in a long-lasting remission. Now, scientists at the New York Genome Center and New York University have developed a genetic screening platform to identify genes that can enhance immune cells to make them more persistent and increase their ability to eradicate tumor cells.
The first FDA-approved gene therapies are living drugs: immune cells taken from cancer patients engineered to target tumor cells. However, for many patients, these advanced therapies do not result in a long-lasting remission. Now, scientists at the New York Genome Center and New York University have developed a genetic screening platform to identify genes that can enhance immune cells to make them more persistent and increase their ability to eradicate tumor cells.