Research Roundup

Dr. Chiarle’s strategy is to reengineer patients’ naturally occurring immune cells to target a specific protein—anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)—that’s both unique to such cancer cells and required for their survival. In preclinical models, he has shown that these hypercharged immune cells, known as ALK.CAR-T cells, can home in on and kill the hardest-to-treat forms of the disease even when spread in multiple organs.

Dr. Chiarle’s approach uses ALK as a molecular tag for destruction, ensuring that ALK-positive cancer cells are efficiently detected and destroyed by ALK.CAR-T cells generated by the patient’s own immune system. In addition, the combination of ALK inhibitors and ALK.CAR-T cells generates an extremely potent cocktail of therapies against the same target, a powerful dual hit that tumors cannot survive. The specificity of ALK.CAR-T therapy also ensures the treatment will spare normal tissue. Moreover, because the ALK protein is also expressed by other types of cancers, Dr. Chiarle’s work could have far-reaching impact on a wide range of malignancies, including other solid tumors.