Evolving T-Cells to Outsmart Cancer

Are modern treatments enough? There are treatments such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy, however, they cannot fully treat the ailment. Nevertheless, there are limitations with those cancer treatments because they target all cells and are not specific, have severe side effects, and have limited persistence. The promising nature of immunotherapy, especially for blood cancers, could have the same effect on solid tumors if refined and enhanced. Therefore, this concept of adaptive T-cell evolution would solve the obstacle of tumor immune evasion by allowing T-cells to evolve in real time, similar to how bacteria adapt under selective pressure. Self-editing T-cells would continuously reinforce their receptors and functions to counteract emerging tumor mutations and improve their effectiveness and longevity. This approach could create a universal and reliable approach to cancer treatment and more adequate personalized therapies. Moreover, this could usher in a new path of fully curing cancer as a whole. In a study by Dimitri et al., CRISPR-Cas9 technology has led to a surge in applying genome editing approaches to combat genetic disorders and cancers. The technology can induce specific mutations in the setting of in vitro and in vivo experimental disease models to study various interventional strategies. (Dimitri et al., 2022) This concept can be promising and change the trajectory of cancer treatment to be improved.