In the standard process, clinicians extract T cells from the patient’s blood, then re-engineer them in the lab, arming each one with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)—engineered proteins designed to recognize specific markers on cancer cells. Once infused back into the patient, these modified T cells circulate through the body, identifying and eliminating the cancer cells they were engineered to target.
In this new off-the-shelf treatment, called JY231, researchers genetically engineered a harmless virus (lentiviral vector) whose sole job is to enter the body and deliver the genetic instructions needed to reprogram the patient’s own immune cells directly inside the body. Sixteen patients who were resistant to standard treatments for their severe neurological and muscle autoimmune conditions each received a single IV infusion of the JY231 treatment.