Bioengineers at UC San Diego have used ultrasound to activate genetically modified, live immune T cells so that they recognize and kill cancer cells. The new platform offers a possible path forward for non-invasively and remotely activating just the CAR-T cells that are near a specific tumor. “CAR-T cell therapy is becoming a paradigm-shifting therapeutic approach for cancer treatment,” said UC San Diego bioengineering professor Peter Yingxiao Wang. “However, major challenges remain before CAR-based immunotherapy can become widely adopted. For instance, the non-specific targeting of CAR-T cells against nonmalignant tissues can be life-threatening. This work could ultimately lead to an unprecedented precision and efficiency in CAR-T cell immunotherapy against solid tumors, while minimizing off-tumor toxicities.” Paper title: "Mechanogenetics for the remote and non-invasive control of cancer immunotherapy," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS). Authors of the study are Yijia Pan, Ziliang Huang, Molly Allen, Yiqian Wu, Ya-Ju Chang, Shu Chien and Yingxiao Wang at UC San Diego; Sangpil Yoon, Changyang Lee and K. Kirk Shung at University of Southern California; and Jie Sun and Michel Sadelain at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants HL121365, GM125379, CA204704 and CA209629), the National Science Foundation (grants CBET1360341 and DMS1361421) and the Beckman Laser Institute Foundation. Read the full story and get a link to the paper here: http://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=2412