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New laboratory at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge will make CAR-T cells for blood cancer treatments

07:00, 25 October 2024

A laboratory that will deliver ‘home-grown’ CAR-T cells to improve treatment for blood cancers is to open at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

The Cambridge lab will be one of only a handful in the UK capable of manufacturing the cells for use in clinical trials and will help to develop new CAR-T cell therapies against different cancers and auto-immune diseases.

CAR-T cell targeting a cancer cell
CAR-T cell targeting a cancer cell

CAR-T - chimeric antigen reception T cell therapy - is offered to adult patients with aggressive B-cell lymphomas and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) who have relapsed or not responded well to chemotherapy or a stem cell transplant.

More than 100 adult CAR-T patients from the region have been treated at Addenbrooke’s since it became the first hospital in the East of England to offer the revolutionary treatment.

A type of immunotherapy, it works by supercharging a patient’s own immune system, training the immune T-cells to destroy the cancer.

It is a ‘living’ treatment, in that the CAR-T cells persist in a patient for months or even years ready to attack cancer cells if they arise again.

Sarah Albon, director of the Cambridge Cellular Therapy Laboratory (CCTL) at Addenbrooke’s, leads a team delivering CAR-T cell therapies and bone marrow and stem cell transplants for patients across the the East of England.

She said: “At the moment, there are a number of novel cell therapy products available commercially, but as an NHS trust we have to buy them in for our patients.

“Having this state-of-the-art space is the missing part of the puzzle for bringing cell therapies from the research bench to bedside.

“It will enable us to translate research into high-quality medicine, readily available for our patients and the new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, planned to be built here in Cambridge.”

How CAR-T cell therapy works. Graphic: Cancer Research UK
How CAR-T cell therapy works. Graphic: Cancer Research UK

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Addenbrooke’s, has been awarded £1.4million in grant funding from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) towards equipment for the laboratory’s research and to deliver more clinical trials to patients.

The new clean rooms are setting to open in the next 12 to 18 months, expanding the facilities at CCTL and delivering more treatments to patients ahead of the new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, which is due to be built by 2029.

Lisa Noble, a mum-of-five from Bishop’s Stortford, was one of the first patients to receive CAR-T cell therapy at Addenbrooke’s.

She was diagnosed with a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma called Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL), which was not responding to chemotherapy (R-CHOP and salvage therapy) and she was not able to have a stem cell transplant either.

“It was my only option and my last hope,” said Lisa, who had the treatment aged 54.

It took Lisa up to six months to recover but she was cancer free and in remission within two months of having the CAR-T therapy.

“It was an amazing feeling,” said Lisa. “I felt unlucky at the time, but if I hadn’t failed the first two treatments, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now, or cancer-free so quickly.

“My daughter delayed her wedding for me, which I finally got to see. I’ve now got seven grandchildren and another on the way. I wouldn’t have been here to see them grow up if the CAR-T didn’t work. I now have a big family around me and it’s just incredible.”

Dr Ben Uttenthal, clinical lead for the CAR-T cell therapy programme at Addenbrooke’s and co-director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre’s Cancer Immunology Programme, said: “For some types of aggressive cancer we are finding that we can cure more than double the number of patients using CAR-T cell therapy. It’s been a game-changing treatment – and we’re only just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

“The University of Cambridge has world-leading expertise in identifying new targets for CAR-T cells to treat other kinds of cancers.

“This funding from the NIHR will give a huge boost to our ability to manufacture these new CAR-T cells for different cancers so that we can offer them to patients in clinical trials.

“In the future, if our clinical trials are successful, we can then look to scale up and roll out treatments nationally and globally, and that’s a really exciting prospect.”

How CAR-T therapy works

How CAR-T cell therapy works. Graphic: Cancer Research UK
How CAR-T cell therapy works. Graphic: Cancer Research UK

A patient’s blood is collected and the T cells are isolated.

These are currently sent overseas and manufactured into personalised CAR-T cell therapies by large pharmaceutical companies - typically in the US or the Netherlands.

The T cells are reprogrammed to carry a protein called the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), which recognises the specific cancer cells.

The modified and personalised CAR-T cells are then grown into large numbers, shipped back to the UK and reinfused back into the patient, ready to fight the cancer.


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