CAR-T immunotherapy to treat Ewing sarcoma

Pablo Menéndez

Fundació Institut de Recerca Contra la Leucèmia Josep Carreras, Spain

Ewing sarcoma is the second most common bone/soft tissue sarcoma in children and young adults. Despite intensive chemo-radio therapies and surgery, just 30% of patients survive five years after diagnosis if metastasis is present.

CAR T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy in which a patient’s T-cells are modified to recognise specific antigens expressed by their tumor. However, it has not been possible to develop a safe and effective CAR T-cell therapy for Ewing sarcoma thus far, since it expresses many of the same antigens that normal cells do.

The researchers have identified three antigens that are highly expressed in Ewing sarcoma and developed a means of targeting just the cells that express all three antigens, thus avoiding toxicity associated with targeting normal cells that express just one of these antigens. The current objective is to initiate the regulatory pathway toward a phase I clinical trial.