Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes: Kill the tumor with your own cells

Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes: Kill the tumor with your own cells! The first lung cancer patient to receive a new treatment is back to normal life.

In the first six months of his life, Tony Burton was saved by an experimental treatment, and he is now back to normal life.

Survival of advanced lung cancer is less than 6 months. In August 2019, 46-year-old Tony Burton was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer with seven lesions on the lung! His first doctor said that his prognosis is very poor, probably only 4 to 6 months of survival. Tony didn’t believe that his life was about to come to an end.

New immunotherapy allows him to return to normal life. Like all advanced patients, Tony began to look around for better treatment options. Fortunately, he found Dr. Jason Chesney from the Brown Cancer Institute of the University of Louisville Health, and Dr. Jason is conducting a clinical trial of a novel immunotherapy.

This therapy is called tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL).

Dr. Chesney, Director of Brown Cancer Center, said: “This is a new cell-based immunotherapy. It is currently undergoing clinical trials in a number of well-known cancer centers around the world. Brown Cancer Center is the only one that provides this in the states of Kentucky and Indiana. Cancer Center for Therapy.

TILs therapy has been clinically studied in the melanoma population for 15-20 years, with excellent clinical data, and then tested in lung cancer patients, cervical cancer, and head and neck cancer.

Burton is honored to be the first lung cancer patient treated at Brown Cancer Center, and his success will bring hope to more patients.

Researchers surgically removed Burton’s tumor and isolated T cells, which are immune cells that can recognize and kill tumors in the body. Because cancer cells are very cunning, they came up with a way to make T cells unable to recognize cancer cells. The T cells extracted from the surrounding tumors are the most powerful immune cells that recognize and kill tumor cells. Part of the precious cells are extracted and amplified in vitro and then returned to Tony’s body, which is equivalent to expanding the body’s anti-cancer “force” to the petascale level, eliminating cancer cells in the body.

After treatment, only one of the 7 tumor lesions in Tony’s body remained.

Tony said: “I hope the tumor will disappear completely in the next scan.”

Chesney said that this treatment has been proven effective by patients with lymphoma and hopes that the US FDA will officially approve the treatment in 2021.

Use your own cells to “kill” the tumor! TILs therapy has achieved great success in the field of solid tumors

Many patients want to know how TILs therapy treats tumors, and who are they suitable for?

As early as 1986, the immunologist Rosenberg and his team discovered for the first time in a tumor tissue from a patient with advanced melanoma that, in addition to a large number of tumor cells, there is also a small part of lymphocytes, which have been Think of it as a treasure to save advanced patients, a kind of immune cell with the strongest cancer killing ability! This is the TILs cell!

TIL, the full name of Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes, is the heterogeneous lymphocytes in the tumor stroma, including T cells and NK cells.

Although these cells are precious, they exist in every tumor patient. After discovering cancer cells in the body, our body mobilizes the immune army to penetrate deep into the tumor tissue, and has the strongest role in identifying, resisting and attacking tumors. One of the “Super Expendables”. After reaching the inside of the tumor, it kills tumor cells directly by releasing cytotoxins. In addition, TIL can also regulate the body’s immune function and improve the body’s ability to kill tumor cells.

However, the number of TILs cells in tumor patients is insufficient, and due to the influence of tumor microenvironment and PD-1, the function of TILs cells is inhibited and cannot effectively kill tumor cells in tumor tissues.

For the past thirty years, Professor Rosenberg and his team have been working hard to do one thing: how to expand the part of immune cells with the strongest cancer killing ability. In the end, they succeeded! Now, scientists have successfully isolated TIL cells from the tissues near the tumor, added growth factor IL-2 for large-scale expansion in vitro, and then injected them back into the patient’s body, thereby expanding the number and attacking ability of the immune “death squads”. In this way, it means that we can use our own immune cells to kill tumors, which is a safer and more effective new type of immunotherapy.

In recent years, TILs therapy has published many important research data internationally:

The latest clinical data of melanoma (2020ASCO) shows that the disease control rate (DCR) of very advanced patients who have undergone targeted and immunotherapy after receiving TILs treatment is as high as 80.3%; the objective response rate is 36.4%; more attractive It is interesting to note that patients with PD-L1 negative also responded, indicating that patients who are ineffective against immune checkpoint inhibitors can still benefit from TIL therapy.

The latest data on cervical cancer shows that the objective response rate (ORR) is 44%, the complete response rate (CR) is 11%, and the disease control rate (DCR) is as high as 85%. Based on this excellent clinical data, the FDA granted tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) treatment method LN-145 as a breakthrough treatment designation in 2019, and it is expected to submit a marketing application in 2021.

The latest clinical data on lung cancer (2020AACR) shows that TIL therapy can achieve a 25% overall response rate for advanced lung cancer.

Sarcoma’s first published data as of June 1, 2020 showed that the objective response rate (ORR) reached 33.3%.

Preliminary data on ovarian cancer showed that 6 patients with advanced metastatic high-grade serous OC received ipilimumab and then underwent surgery, received TIL therapy, and then received low-dose IL-2 and nivolumab. The results showed that one patient achieved partial remission, and the other five patients experienced stable disease for up to 12 months.

In addition, TILs therapy also shows great potential in colorectal cancer, breast cancer and other malignant tumors. Please check the relevant links at the end of the article. Various studies that have been developed indicate that TIL therapy will need to be continuously improved and developed, and will eventually become a new weapon for humans to fight cancer.

Currently, TILs therapy is expected to submit a marketing application in 2021. Once approved by the FDA, this will be the first cellular immunotherapy for solid tumors and will bring huge survival benefits to cancer patients. The Medical Department of Global Oncologist Network has written a lot of popular science articles about this therapy. In addition, clinical trials for various solid tumors are currently underway. You can call the Medical Department of Global Oncologist Network for preliminary evaluation.

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“New England Journal of Medicine”: After 140 billion immune cells entered the body, her seven tumor lesions all subsided

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Has boarded “Science” and “Nature”! Another new immunotherapy is coming soon!

Tumor immunotherapy is hailed as the hope of conquering cancer, whether it is the PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy that has been approved in many cancers, or adoptive cellular immunotherapy, as well as many cancer vaccines under development. It’s just the tip of the immunology iceberg. Researchers are digging into the iceberg for more information, how to control the immune response, and apply these treatments to clinical benefits, giving us more and more hope of survival, and the hope of conquering cancer may be in it. Expect more breakthroughs in immunotherapy and bring more miracles to cancer patients.

(source:internet, reference only)

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