Scientists solve a major roadblock in cancer cell therapy: Study

Researchers have found a reliable way to grow helper T cells from stem cells, solving a major challenge in immune-based cancer therapy. Helper T cells act as the immune system’s coordinators, helping other immune cells fight longer and harder.
The team discovered how to precisely control a key signal that determines which type of T cell forms. This advance could lead to ready-made cell therapies that are cheaper, faster, and easier to access.
For the first time, researchers at the University of British Columbia have shown how to consistently produce a crucial type of human immune cell, known as helper T cells, from stem cells in a controlled lab setting. The research, published on January 7 in Cell Stem Cell, removes a major barrier that has slowed the development, affordability, and large-scale production of cell therapies.
By solving this problem, the work could help make off-the-shelf treatments more accessible and effective for conditions such as cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, and more.
“Engineered cell therapies are transforming modern medicine,” said co-senior author Dr. Peter Zandstra, professor and director of the UBC School of Biomedical Engineering. “This study addresses one of the biggest challenges in making these lifesaving treatments accessible to more people, showing for the first time a reliable and scalable way to grow multiple immune cell types.” Over the past several years, engineered cell therapies such as CAR-T treatments have produced dramatic, sometimes lifesaving results for people with cancers that were once considered untreatable. These therapies work by reprogramming a patient’s immune cells to recognise and destroy disease, effectively turning those cells into ‘living drugs’.
Even with their success, cell therapies remain costly, complex to manufacture, and out of reach for many patients around the world.
One key reason is that most existing treatments rely on a patient’s own immune cells, which must be collected and specially prepared over several weeks for each individual. “The long-term goal is to have off-the-shelf cell therapies that are manufactured ahead of time and on a larger scale from a renewable source like stem cells,” said co-senior author Dr. Megan Levings, a professor of surgery and biomedical engineering at UBC.