30 Sep Researchers look to advanced metabolic imaging to improve cancer immunotherapy
Dan Pham, a postdoc in the Skala Lab, explains her research on CAR T cells at a special event.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is transforming cancer care for patients with cancers of the blood, but has proven especially challenging to develop against solid tumors.
Researchers at the Morgridge Institute and UW–Madison published new research in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering using advanced metabolic imaging to better understand how cells function within the tumor microenvironment.
“Metabolism is one of the many factors that affects how T cells function within the tumor microenvironment, and hopefully one of the key factors that could inform what can be made better for these CAR T cells in a solid tumor,” says Dan Pham, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Morgridge Investigator Melissa Skala and first author of the study.
The tumor microenvironment is harsh and suppressive to immune cells with limited oxygen and glucose, both important elements for T cells to perform their function. However, during manufacturing, CAR T cells are grown in an artificial environment with unlimited nutrients and oxygen.
“When we put them in the body, we’re asking them, in a way, to survive in the wild,” says Skala. “Kind of like how you think of a captive lion being released into the wild — they don’t do so well.”