Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the commonest type of liver cancer. There will be over 20000 new patients diagnosed this year in the United States, and Texas has the highest rate of HCC in the US. Most patients cannot be cured and die from their disease. We propose a new type of treatment using the patients’ own immune system. We will collect special cells from the blood called T cells. We put a new gene in these T cells that allows them to recognize and kill the HCC cells. This gene is called GPC3-CAR. We have also added two extra genes called interleukin-15 and interleukin-21 (IL-15/21), which should make the GPC3-CAR T cells even more effective in killing HCC and allow them to last lon...

Read More

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the commonest type of liver cancer. There will be over 20000 new patients diagnosed this year in the United States, and Texas has the highest rate of HCC in the US. Most patients cannot be cured and die from their disease. We propose a new type of treatment using the patients’ own immune system. We will collect special cells from the blood called T cells. We put a new gene in these T cells that allows them to recognize and kill the HCC cells. This gene is called GPC3-CAR. We have also added two extra genes called interleukin-15 and interleukin-21 (IL-15/21), which should make the GPC3-CAR T cells even more effective in killing HCC and allow them to last longer. We will test these cells in a clinical study. We will collect blood from patients with HCC, put the GPC3-CAR and IL-15/21 genes inside their T cells and then return them to the patients. We will evaluate if the T cells are safe, if they grow and stay alive in the patient, and how they interact with the cancer cells inside HCC tumors. Finally, we will discover whether the T cells are strong enough to make the cancer smaller or even disappear. If this first study is promising, we will extend the approach to a larger number of patients by using our contacts with commercial companies.

Read Less