CRISPR Editing Creates TCR Swap-Shop for Cancer Immunotherapy

A team at Cardiff University in the U.K. has used CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to generate engineered killer T cells that are up to a thousand times more sensitive to cancer cell antigens than T cells engineered using more conventional approaches, and which allowed far better targeting of T cells to cancer cell lines and patient-derived leukemia cells.The new approach exploits the genome-editing technology to remove the T cells’ endogenous T-cell receptors (TCRs) and simultaneously replace t