Hosted by Dr. Oliver Medvedik, the journal Club returns on Tuesday 25th January at 12:00 Eastern and will be broadcast live on the Lifespan.io Facebook page. The topic for this month is the paper ‘CAR T cells produced in vivo to treat cardiac injury‘ which looks at how researchers created CAR T cells to target scar tissue in the heart. Being able to remove fibrotic tissue from the heart could help the heart to heal properly following an injury.
Making CAR T cells in vivo
Cardiac fibrosis is the stiffening and scarring of heart tissue and can be fatal. Rurik et al. designed an immunotherapy strategy to generate transient chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that can recognize the fibrotic cells in the heart (see the Perspective by Gao and Chen). By injecting CD5-targeted lipid nanoparticles containing the messenger RNA (mRNA) instructions needed to reprogram T lymphocytes, the researchers were able to generate therapeutic CAR T cells entirely inside the body. Analysis of a mouse model of heart disease revealed that the approach was successful in reducing fibrosis and restoring cardiac function. The ability to produce CAR T cells in vivo using modified mRNA may have a number of therapeutic applications. —PNK
Literature
Rurik, J. G., Tombácz, I., Yadegari, A., Méndez Fernández, P. O., Shewale, S. V., Li, L., … & Epstein, J. A. (2022). CAR T cells produced in vivo to treat cardiac injury. Science, 375(6576), 91-96.
View the article at lifespan.io
