T time for tumor vasculature

A National Cancer Institute study has shown that T cells engineered to seek out vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 can stop tumor growth in mice.¹ NCI has advanced the engineered cells into a Phase I/II dose-escalation trial to treat metastatic cancer, although the complexity of the technique could make it difficult to commercialize.

For more than 20 years, Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at NCI, has been working on adoptive transfer of T cells to treat cancer. In a 1988 paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, he first reported that tumor-reactive T cells could be isolated from patients with metastatic melanoma, cultured ex vivo and reintroduced into patients to induce cancer regression.²...