Scientists can provide live images of how CAR T-cell therapy and other immunotherapies work in hematological tumors. This is possible thanks to an extension of an advanced imaging tool previously developed for solid tumors. Researchers from the Princess Máxima Center published about it in Nature Protocols.
To better understand who can benefit from cell therapies, it is essential to learn more about how the engineered immune cells and tumor cells interact. The Rios group of the Princess Máxima Center developed a 3D imaging technique that provides live insight into the interaction between immune and tumor cells.
The imaging tool, called BEHAV3D, can detect immune cells that show behavior that makes them more effective at destroying tumor cells. This allows the most promising immune cells to be found for therapeutic use. The imaging tool has even more applications. The researchers can use it to study behavioral differences in many different immune cells and forms of cancer.
For example, they saw remarkable differences in the way T cells respond to tumor cells in liquid or solid tumors. In blood cancers they move from one cell to another and behave like ‘serial killers’. In solid tumors they adhere strongly to the structure of the solid tumor. From that point on they try to reach and kill all the tumor cells.
Source:
Princess Máxima Center
