Targeted treatments plus engineered immune cells may slow early spread of triple‑negative breast cancer, study reveals

A new study has revealed a promising new approach to curb the spread of triple-negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat forms of the disease. Published recently in Cancer Letters, Gabriel Duda, Ph.D., scientific director of transplant oncology and therapeutics at Houston Methodist Research Institute, and his research team discovered pairing targeted treatments with CAR T-cell therapy may help control cancer recurrence when intervention options are otherwise limited.

CAR T-cells are immune cells engineered in the laboratory to recognize and attack cancer. While they have worked well in some blood cancers, success in solid tumors such as breast cancer has been more challenging.

“One of the key findings was that CAR T-cells worked best when the remaining cancer burden in distant organs was minimal,” Duda said. “This suggests that using CAR T-cell therapy shortly after surgery or radiation may be a promising strategy to prevent cancer recurrence.”

In laboratory and mouse models, the researchers found that radiation therapy may make tumors more vulnerable to CAR T-cells. The combination slowed tumor growth and reduced the chances of cancer spreading to the lungs and liver. Importantly, the study showed that CAR T-cell therapy was most effective when given after surgical removal of the primary tumor, when only small, hard-to-detect clusters of cancer cells remained.

The researchers also observed that radiation appeared to enhance the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy when targeted to metastatic lesions that were unresponsive to immunotherapy.

“This study helps us better understand when and how CAR T-cells might be most useful in targeting solid tumors,” Duda said. “While these findings are from preclinical models, they provide a rationale for carefully designed combination trials in patients with aggressive cancers in the future.”

Duda’s team conducted the study while at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) before joining Houston Methodist. Other collaborators on this study include Franziska Hausmann, Tatsuya Kobayashi, Luke Maggs, Max Meyer, Shahrzad Arya, Cristina Ferrone, Xinhui Wang and Soldano Ferrone from MGH.