Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common acute leukemia in adults. Intensive chemotherapy cures only a subset of patients, and immunotherapy has had limited success in AML. One novel approach is chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, which involves genetically engineering a patient’s own immune cells to target cancer cells. The difficulty with this approach is that the majority of available targets present on AML cells also reside on many normal cells. Based on emerging data demonstrating overexpression of the gene CD70 in AML cells compared to normal tissues, Dr. Leick and his colleagues have recently optimized a CD70-targeted CAR T therapy and demonstrated its efficacy in AML. Despite the superiority of this CAR over prior versions, however, it is less effective against AML cells that present a low amount of the antigen. Dr. Leick is now working to improve this CAR through genetic modification and/or a dual targeting approach. His work has the potential to generate a safe, highly potent, optimized strategy for treating this leukemia.
Content courtesy of Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation
Published research
Silva H, Martin G, Birocchi F, Wehrli M, Kann MC, Supper VM, Parker A, Graham CE, Bratt AG, Bouffard AA, Donner H, Escobar G, Takei HN, Armstrong A, Goncalves S, Berger TR, Choi BD, Maus MV, Leick MB. CD70 CAR T cells secreting an anti-CD33/anti-CD3 dual targeting antibody overcome antigen heterogeneity in AML. Blood. 2024.