By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer

Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy are often recognized as the three most common forms of cancer treatment. Sometimes, the latter two approaches become no longer effective when cancers become drug resistant, allowing the cells to further spread. At the University of Calgary, however, promising developments in immunotherapy intervention seek to provide alternative treatment when common therapies are not viable. 

Cells continually divide to replenish dying cells, but certain gene mutations can create cancer cells, which divide and spread in an uncontrolled manner. The human body naturally defends itself from cancerous cells, though sometimes they can “hide from the immune system and avoid being destroyed,” according to the Canadian Cancer Society. Immunotherapy seeks to help strengthen the ability to recognize and fight these covert cells, allowing the body to continue using its natural line of defense.

University of Calgary researchers have “discovered a unique target present on a specific group of solid cancerous tumours. Armed with that information, researchers from the Riddell Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy, a core research centre of the Arnie Charbonneau Cancer Institute, developed a new experimental therapy,” according to a press release. The Peak corresponded with Riddell Centre associate director of business Nubia Zepeda for more information on this novel therapy.

Zepeda explained that the treatment utilizes chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, which “uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer.” Specifically, “T cells, a type of immune cell, are collected from the patient and genetically engineered in a laboratory to recognize specific markers found on cancer cells,” she noted. “Once these modified cells are returned to the patient, they can seek out and destroy cancer cells while sparing most healthy tissue.”

CAR T-cell therapy itself has been in clinical trials since the 1980s, and was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017 to treat acute lymphocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer. Zepeda said, “However, its success against solid tumours has been much more limited.” This new therapy seeks to change that. “University of Calgary researchers have developed a novel CAR T-cell therapy called GCAR1, designed to treat alveolar soft part sarcoma, a rare and aggressive cancer with few effective treatment options,” she explained. Sarcomas are solid tumours, often beginning “as a painless lump” before spreading through the bloodstream.

“This targeted approach aims to improve the therapy’s ability to recognize and eliminate cancer cells.” 

— Nubia Zepeda, Riddell Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy associate director of business

“GCAR1 targets a protein called GPNMB, which is highly expressed on certain cancer cells but has limited expression in healthy tissues,” shared Zepeda. “This targeted approach aims to improve the therapy’s ability to recognize and eliminate cancer cells while reducing damage to normal cells.”

So far, “the research team has treated two patients through single-patient studies,” Zepeda told The Peak. Stéphanie Alain was able to extend her life an additional 18 months through treatment, giving her more time to spend with her family and son. Kent B., also a parent, has had success in treatment, with “the lesions on his lungs [having] decreased by more than half the size,” the university shared. 

“While these are early findings, the results provide hope that GCAR1 could become a promising new treatment option for patients with difficult-to-treat solid tumours that currently have few effective therapies,” Zepeda added.