Eric Smith, MD, PhD
Director of Translational Research, Immune Effector Cell Therapies, Dana-Farber
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell cancer for which we still lack cures. Despite many advances in immunotherapies that result in high overall response rates, relapse is a common occurrence. This year, the Accelerator supports a new strategy to induce long-term remission – perhaps even cure in some patients — based on dual-targeted CAR T-cell therapy which uses a patient’s own engineered T cells to specifically target cancer cells.
Developed in the lab of Prof. Eric Smith, MD, PhD, director, Translational Research, Immune Effector Cell Therapies at Dana-Farber, the goal of this technology is to eradicate all myeloma cells including those almost always left behind that lead to relapse in nearly all patients.
In current myeloma treatment, approved CAR T-cell therapies target single antigens such as B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA), or, in previous work from Dr. Smith’s team, targeting GPRC5D (G-protein-coupled receptor family C group 5 member D), that has been tested in first-in-human clinical trials.
The goal is to create a CAR that targets two different myeloma antigens to enhance the success of CAR T-cell therapy targeting only BCMA. The impact would be to get multiple myeloma patients into deep remissions and hopefully cure some of them.
“The Accelerator funding will expedite the selection of lead CAR T-cell candidates that will ultimately be tested in clinical trials,” says Dr. Smith.
The Accelerator funding will expedite the selection of lead CAR T-cell candidates that will ultimately be tested in clinical trials.
Eric Smith, MD, PhD
Generating and screening CAR T-cell libraries along multiple parameters, including cytotoxicity and persistence, is essential to the identification and development of clinically translatable cellular therapies. Joining the effort is Dana-Farber’s IMPACT2 (IMmunotherapy Platform for Antibody and CAR Therapeutics discovery and Translation) team, headed by Anusuya Ramasubramanian, PhD.
Team Members