Christian Hinrichs, MD, on Improving Solid Tumor Targeting With Engineered T-Cell Therapies

“I think we're finally starting to crack open the targeting of solid tumors with engineered T cells. I think one advantage of the HPV model is that it really locks in the target antigen with uniform expression and tumor restricted expression and lets us start to understand what's truly going to be limiting in these treatments and what the next generation therapies are going to need to address.”

Solid tumors remain an area of unmet need despite advances in cell therapy and ongoing research seeks to find new approaches to address the unique challenges of these cancers. One such approach is with engineered T cell therapies, an approach that Christian Hinrichs, MD, chief of cancer immunotherapy at Rutgers Cancer Institute is currently attempting to treat patients with.

Hinrichs presented data seen so far with different T-cell approaches in solid tumors at the Onco Cell Therapy Summit (OCTS) USA 2022, held June 29-30 in Boston, Massachusetts. These approaches included tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy and T-cell receptor therapies targeted toward different antigens.

CGTLive spoke with Hinrichs to learn more about the results of these different cell therapy approaches. He discussed challenges in targeting solid tumor cells and future research and approaches to pursue.

REFERENCE

Hinrichs C. Engineered T cell therapy for viral and non-viral epithelial cancers. Presented at: OCTS USA 2022, June 29-30, Boston, MA.