Empowered Patient Podcast Gamma Delta T Cell Therapies to Target Solid Tumors with Will Ho IN8bio
Will Ho, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of IN8bio, a company developing next-generation cellular therapies using gamma delta T cells, which play a unique role in bridging the innate and adaptive immune systems. GDT cell therapies may have reduced side effects compared to other T cell therapies as they can more selectively target tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. IN8bio is conducting clinical trials using autologous and allogeneic gamma delta T cells for leukemia and glioblastoma with the goal of eliminating the cancer.
Will explains, "As you probably are aware, our immune system is generally broken down into two halves. One is the innate or the immediate portion of the system, which is why we're called IN8bio, the gamma delta T cells, which are considered innate immune cells. On the other, the adaptive is the memory part of our immune system. The gamma delta T cells bridge between both the innate and the adaptive. They actually have features across both. In particular, one of their natural functions is actually to discriminate and to distinguish between those cells that are healthy and safe versus those that are transformed or should be eliminated. That's the very challenge of cancer cells. At the end of the day, they're our own cells, and the gamma delta T cells have a unique ability to distinguish between what should be safe and left alone versus those cells that they should kill."
"With the CAR T therapies, we have genetically engineered specific targets such as CD 19 or DPMA into an alpha-beta T cell - somewhat of a release and let it go. Those cells go and seek out every cell in the body that expresses its specific target and kills it. I kind of half-heartedly joke that it's a little bit like Terminator- once you let it go, it seeks its target to try to kill it, no matter the secondary damage. In many cases, we've had numerous toxicities, some of which have resulted in patient death. The gamma delta T cells are more nuanced in its approach. We have created CAR T, specifically for the biology of gamma delta T cells."
"Early preclinical work shows they can discriminate between the leukemic cells that should be eliminated and the healthy tissue. This will become increasingly important as we try to target solid tumors. Solid tumors is a market that's nine times bigger than that of leukemias and lymphomas. It's challenging because the tumors, at the end of the day, are intertwined in an organ. Most likely, we need to keep those organs, whether they're your brain like in glioblastoma that we're targeting, or lung cancer or pancreatic cancer and others, we need to be able to discriminate and pick out the healthy tissue versus the tumor tissue because we can't just completely ablate the organ."
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