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A new, supercharged form of immunotherapy for breast cancer has just been announced by UCLA oncologists in the Journal of Hematology & Oncology. The new approach involves the production of CAR-NKT cells, standing for chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer T cells, that have the superpower to attack not one but dozens of tumor cell surface antigens simultaneously.  The cells target a protein mesothelin, which cancers need to rapidly grow and spread.

Many current immunotherapies only target a single receptor. Triple negative breast cancers lack many of these common receptors making them difficult to treat successfully. This CAR-NKT therapy attacks so many receptors it could prove effective for those with these triple negative cancers.

Even better, the CAR-NKT cells can be mass-produced from donated stem cells and stored for immediate use on demand. Very promising is the fact that the CAR-NKT cells target, mesothelin, is not only found on breast cancers but also on the surfaces of ovarian, pancreatic, and lung cancer cells.

So far, these CAR-NKT cells have only been tested in the laboratory on tissue cultured breast cancer cells harvested from patient swith advanced disease.  Clinical trials are in the planning stages, and hopefully, this super-immunotherapy will be available to save patients with a variety of difficult-to-treat cancers…..someday soon.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251022/New-type-of-immunotherapy-could-change-the-treatment-plan-for-triple-negative-breast-cancer.aspx

https://jhoonline.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13045-025-01736-9

#immunotherapy #CAR-NKT #cancer #breast #triplenegative #ovarian #pancreatic #lung