Scientists at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine have developed an experimental approach that could eventually benefit mesothelioma patients. The CAR T cell immunotherapy breakthrough takes a different approach to treating solid tumors like mesothelioma, targeting tumors’ protective cells rather than cancer cells directly.
Mesothelioma Patients Could Benefit from Immune Shield-Targeting Strategy
Solid tumors like mesothelioma create protective “fortresses” that suppress immune attack, the Mount Sinai researchers took a different treatment approach, targeting those defensive cells. “What we call a tumor is really cancer cells surrounded by cells that feed and protect them. It’s a walled fortress,” explains lead author Dr. Jaime Mateus-Tique, describing the challenge of using immunotherapy to treat mesothelioma and other solid tumors. “We kept running into the same problem—we can’t get past this fortress’s guards.”
Writing in the journal Cancer Cell, the researchers describe how the new approach uses engineered CAR T cells—derived from patients’ own immune cells—to target tumor macrophages rather than cancer cells themselves. In healthy tissues, macrophages fight infection and repair damage, but inside mesothelioma and other tumors, these cells are reprogrammed to block immune attack and help cancer survive and spread. With an eye to converting these protective macrophages “from protectors to friends,” and using them as gateways to deliver immune-activating molecules into tumors, the group engineered CAR T cells that produce interleukin-12. This activates killer T cells that can destroy cancer cells once the protective shield is dismantled.
Mesothelioma Tumors’ Protective Macrophages May Become Treatment Targets
Treating lab animals with metastatic lung and ovarian cancers, the researchers found that treated mice survived months longer, and many were completely cured. Advanced spatial genomics revealed the therapy reshaped tumor environments, removing immune-suppressing cells and drawing in cancer-killing immune cells. Though the original study specifically looked at the impact of the approach on preclinical models of metastatic ovarian and lung cancer, its shielding of cancer cells with protective macrophages to block immune responses is “antigen-independent,” meaning it could also be used for the treatment of other solid tumors like mesothelioma.
Senior author Dr. Brian Brown, Director of the Icahn Genomics Institute, emphasized that “macrophages are found in every type of tumor, sometimes outnumbering the cancer cells”—including mesothelioma tumors where these protective cells create barriers preventing effective immunotherapy. “What’s so exciting is that our treatment converts these cells from protecting the cancer to killing it. We’ve turned foe into ally.”
If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, this new approach to treatment offers real hope. For more information on resources available to you, contact the Patient Advocates at Mesothelioma.net today at 1-800-692-8608.
