Making a new generation of cancer therapy: safe and effective Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cells

Cancer immunotherapy is a promising approach to cure cancer. Adoptive T cell transfer, such as Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, shows remarkable efficacy for blood cancers. However, CAR-T cells show only marginal antitumour effects in solid cancers. Key challenges relating to CAR-T cells include, restricted trafficking to, infiltration into and activation within the solid tumours. Ishihara is a bioengineer and immuno-oncologist, who is interested in making better cancer medicine and translational research. Ishihara develops drug delivery approach to increase efficacy of cancer medicine while limiting off-target immune activation. Here, we aim to generate a new generation of CAR-T cells using bioengineering approach. We seek to create highly effective and safe solid tumour-specific killing strategy. We expect that this new technology will be a breakthrough for the cancer immunotherapy, especially for solid cancer patients. We expect this technology to hold greater translational potential and hope to further collaborate with both the industry and academia. Ishihara laboratory is a new laboratory, but we will have number of collaborators to support this research. The student who is highly motivated and some cellular/molecular biology techniques is desired.