Researchers have developed a technological platform that leverages yeast cells to test and understand new cancer treatments under development. The use of this platform promises to significantly reduce the costs and time needed in the drug development process.
Traditionally, immunotherapy treatments required several months to be tested in the lab. With this new method, the testing period could be collapsed to just a matter of days or a few weeks.
The findings of this research appeared in the Nature Communications journal and feature the technology dubbed yeast surface display. The system involves using modified yeast cells to behave and respond in a similar way to the behavior and responses of immune cells in humans once exposed to a variety of antigens targeting cancer cells.
Prof. Sine R. Hadrup, who participated in the study, explains that the yeast cells that they modified genetically work as a biological test screen on which different recipes of cancer antigens can be inserted. The yeast cell then displays the selected antigens on its exterior surface in a way that mimics how cancer cells would. Researchers can then expose those modified yeast strains to CAR T cells in order to observe and measure how the yeast cells respond.
In this way, scientists can quickly and cost-effectively learn which variants of immunotherapies are likely to be efficacious, and why. Currently, the practice is to extract immune cells from a patient’s blood, grow them, engineer those cells to have the required CAR T variety, and then reintroduce them into the patient’s body while hoping that the treatment works. The new yeast-based technology cuts the cost and lengthy duration of using human cells during therapy development and could ultimately reduce the final cost of delivering immunotherapy to patients.
The method also holds potential in helping to quickly and easily study how the body is likely to respond to the different methods that malignant cells deploy to evade cancer treatment or develop resistance. In this way, variants of CAR T treatments that are least likely to encounter evasion or resistance can be developed against different cancers.
For now, the new platform is focusing on blood cancers against which immunotherapies have registered remarkable success. However, the researchers hope that their platform can help in future studies aimed at making inroads into treating solid tumors using immunotherapy.
The use of immunotherapy to treat cancers is enjoying plenty of scientific attention, with many companies like Calidi Biotherapeutics Inc. (NYSE American: CLDI) exploring cutting-edge approaches like the use of oncolytic viruses in immunotherapy. It is just a matter of time before these research efforts of different entities yield regulator-approved therapies that can alter the trajectory of cancer treatment around the world.
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