University of Ottawa

Purpose

Even though CAR-T therapies show dramatic efficacy in inducing remission of cancers, their high cost and toxicity remain significant issues. Upon infusion of the T cells to a foreign host, the TCR reacts to the foreign MHC and induces graft versus host disease (GvHD), making it challenging to generate off-the-shelf, allogeneic therapy that can be given universally to genetically unrelated recipients. The GvHD often induces severe side effects, such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurotoxicity. The team hypothesize that CAR-NK cells will provide potent and safe immunotherapy for patients with hematological malignancies and solid tumors, which often do not respond to conventional therapies and current immunotherapies. In addition, the team reasons that advancing the technology of utilizing iPSCs-derived CAR-NK cells will facilitate the development of a more affordable and accessible off-the-shelf cellular cancer therapy. For this, the team will tackle the following questions to advance CAR-NK cell therapy to a clinical trial.