Malignant tumors of the central nervous system (CNS) are the leading cause of cancer death in children and remain an unmet medical need.
At the IdiPAZ-CNIO Pediatric Onco-Hematology Clinical Research Unit, Lucía Fernández y and students Marta Ibáñez Navarro y Laura Clares Villa are seeking to develop a new CAR-T therapy for these tumors, and their research was recently recognized at the Iberian Congress of the Spanish Society of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.
CAR-T therapies are a type of personalized immunotherapy in which the patient’s immune cells are modified in the laboratory to enhance their ability to recognize and destroy tumor cells. Their use, increasingly common in adults, is still limited in pediatrics. The European Society for Pediatric Oncology has already warned that the low incidence of childhood cancer “limits its commercial appeal” and has called for a regulatory environment that promotes the translation of academic research in this area into clinical practice.
The IdiPAZ-CNIO Pediatric Onco-Hematology Clinical Research Unit is conducting research precisely so that children and adolescents are not left out of these immunotherapies, which are more effective and have fewer side effects than conventional treatments.
Lucía Fernández, together with Marta Ibáñez and Laura Clares, are developing a new CAR-T cell therapy specially designed to address the specific challenges posed by brain tumors, such as an environment that reduces the body’s natural defenses. Their CAR-T 4G-IL18-NKG2D-CAR has the potential to counteract this immunosuppression and can recruit other immune system cells to the tumor site.
The title of their contribution, granted an award by the Spanish Society of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology has the title Preclinical analysis of the antitumor potential of NKG2D-CAR and 4G-IL18 NKG2D-CAR T lymphocytes in malignant tumors of the central nervous system.