A new nationally coordinated research platform for next generation cancer cell therapies Wednesday, March 17, 2021 ExCELLirate Canada, led by the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) at Queen’s University, has received $5,187,685 to develop a national research platform to coordinate the development of new cancer cell therapies. This will be a comprehensive national research, development and testing platform that will benefit patients, healthcare providers, and industry by ensuring Canadian cell therapy innovations are safely, cost effectively and efficiently manufactured. There has been a paradigm shift in cancer research and treatment because of new cell-based therapies that use modified immune cells to target cancer. Adoptive cell transfer involves taking a patient’s immune cells from their blood and modifying them in a lab so they can target cancer cells more effectively — enhancing the patient’s immune system to fight their cancer. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has successfully treated children and adult patients with forms of leukemia and lymphoma and there is growing evidence that engineered immune cells have the potential to be broadly applicable across more types of cancer. Read the full story here.
