The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) announced in a press release that they are working to combat treatment resistant metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC) and improve those patients’ quality of life and longevity.
The scientists used a CAR T cell therapy they created and mixed it with the diabetes treatment “thiazolidinediones.” The goal of this action was to “enhance NECTIN4 expression and make tumor cells more susceptible to NECTIN4-CAR T therapy.”
The treatment showed favorable results, which are reported in Nature Communications. The authors said, “Our strategy of repurposing rosiglitazone to prime NECTIN4 expression across a population of tumor cells with low to moderate expression significantly enhanced anti-tumor activity of NECTIN4-targeting CAR T therapy. Importantly, our strategy utilizes a transient pulse of rosiglitazone prior to CAR T administration, limiting the potential toxicities of long-term PPARγ agonist use (i.e., edema and cardiotoxicity).”
