"Researchers at Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine have devised an immunotherapy technique that combines chimeric antigen receptor-T cell therapy, or CAR-T cell therapy, with a cancer-killing virus to more effectively target and treat solid cancer tumors." "The study suggests CAR-T cells can deliver the oncolytic virus to the tumor. Then the virus can infiltrate tumor cells, replicate to bust the cells open, and stimulate a potent immune response. "This approach allows the tumor to be killed by the virus as well as by the CAR-T cells," explains Richard Vile, Ph.D., co-leader of the Gene and Virus Therapy Program within Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Professor. "In addition, when the virus is delivered, it turns the tumor into a very inflammatory environment, which the patient's own immune system then sees and starts to attack."
"By putting the virus onto the CAR-T, we activate them against both the virus and the tumor, and they acquire immunological memory," Dr. Vile says. "This allows us to give a boost with the virus at a later time point, which in turn makes the CAR-T cells wake up again and undergo additional rounds of killing the tumor."
They found that the combination therapy led to high cure rates in tumors in multiple sites without causing significant toxicity. They also found it resulted in apparent protection in the cured mice against tumor recurrence.
"Clinically, delivering the therapy systemically is a potential advantage because you could possibly treat patients with metastatic disease without having to inject each tumor," Dr. Vile explains.
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-researchers-load-car-t-cells-with-oncolytic-virus-to-treat-solid-cancer-tumors/#:~:text=The%20study%20suggests%20CAR%2DT,%22%20explains%20Richard%20Vile%2C%20Ph.