Seattle Children’s Research Institute is launching a clinical trial that will examine a new kind of cancer-fighting treatment. The treatment is a type of CAR T immunotherapy, which reprograms a person’s immune cells to find and destroy cancer.
CAR T therapies have found early success in blood cancers, including leukemia and lymphoma, but have run into obstacles when it comes to solid tumor cancers like lung and breast cancer.
This new trial, called STRIvE-01, is hoping to overcome those obstacles for children with sarcoma, kidney and neuroblastoma tumors. The trial will treat children whose cancer has relapsed, a group that often has few remaining treatment options.
Dr. Katie Albert, the lead investigator of the trial, told GeekWire in an email interview that the goal of this early trial is to test the safety of the new therapy and establish the best dose, although researchers also hope to see the trial make headway against patients’ tumors.
“Further, we hope to observe efficacy against one or more types of tumors and minimal toxicity to normal tissues. In the best case scenario, this will simply be the first step in developing a curative therapy for our highest risk patients,” Albert said.
