Topic: SCCA T-cell Therapy Trial

It's the only adoptive T cell therapy trial in the country that addresses progressive HER-2/neu-positive breast cancer.  Salazar's study investigates the use of adoptive T cell therapy as a strategy to encourage certain cells from the patient's own immune system to attack and destroy HER-2/neu cancer cells.

First the researchers vaccinate the patient with a HER-2/neu cancer vaccine, to encourage her T cells to generate an immune response against the HER-2/neu protein. Then they remove the T cells - about a cup's worth of fluid, says Salazar - and culture them, converting millions of T cells into billions. After 24 days, these T cells, many of them HER-2/neu-specific, are infused back into the patient.

The hypothesis, says Salazar, is that the increased numbers of HER-2/neu-specific T cells will "go back home to the HER-2/neu-positive tumor and destroy it in a targeted fashion." Preliminary data are promising, showing that adoptive T cell therapy results in anti-tumor responses in patients with advanced stage HER-2/neu-positive breast cancer - patients who were no longer responding to conventional therapy.

http://depts.washington.edu/meddev/uwmedmagazine/features/article-02.php