Glioblastoma is the most common and most aggressive primary brain tumor, with an average survival after diagnosis of less than two years, and against which current treatments remain ineffective. In recent years, immunotherapies have given patients renewed hope, albeit with relatively modest success. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) has succeeded in identifying a specific marker on the surface of tumor cells, and in generating immune cells carrying an antibody to destroy them.
Furthermore, these cells, called CAR- T cells , appear to be capable of targeting diseased cells in the tumor that do not carry this antigen , while sparing healthy cells. These results, published in the journal Cancer Immunology Research , are a first step towards the development of clinical trials with human patients. Glioblastomas carry biological characteristics that make them particularly difficult to treat.
Able to induce a microenvironment that limits the attack of the immune system, they escape standard treatments and recur rapidly. Denis Migliorini, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, holder of the ISREC Foundation Chair in Brain tumor Immunology, member of the Translational Research Centre in Onco-Haematology (CRTOH) and attending physician in charge of the HUG Neuro-oncology Unit, is an expert in CAR-T cells (for chimeric antigen receptors T-cells). This immunotherapy consists in collecting im.
