Immune cells can become exhausted after prolonged exposure to cancer, gradually losing their ability to attack tumor cells. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in aggressive brain tumors and can severely limit the effectiveness of immunotherapy.

A team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (The Institute) have created a three-dimensional, beating heart-on-a-chip, or “mini-heart,” using blood cells from a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a leading cause of heart transplantation.

T-cell receptor, or TCR, therapy is a cancer treatment that genetically reprograms immune cells, called T cells, to hunt down cancer with precision. It’s similar to another treatment, CAR T-cell therapy, but with one key difference: CAR T-cell therapy can only spot proteins that naturally appear outside a cancer cell. TCR therapy, however, can also catch small protein fragments from inside the cell that are carried to the surface and displayed like little name tags.