BioCentury
ARTICLE | Preclinical News

Team identifies new target for MM CAR T therapy

November 6, 2017 11:52 PM UTC

In a paper published in Nature Medicine, researchers at Osaka University and colleagues identified activated integrin beta(7) as a new target for a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for multiple myeloma, demonstrating that a particular conformation of a cell surface antigen expressed on cancer cells could be targeted for cancer immunotherapy.

In a screen to identify antibodies specific to MM cells, the authors observed that an antibody -- dubbed MMG49 -- reacted to MM cells, but not other bone marrow cell types in MM patient samples. The researchers determined that MMG49 specifically targeted the active confirmation of integrin beta(7), which is abundant on the surface of MM cells, but not abundant in its activated form on the surface of other bone marrow cell types. Mapping of integrin beta(7) epitope residues showed that MMG49 reacted with an epitope that is exposed in the active conformation of integrin beta(7) but inaccessible in the inactivated conformation...