This early-stage study, published in Nature Communications and led by physician-scientist Dr. Theodore Scott Nowicki in collaboration with Dr. Antoni Ribas, Dr. Owen Witte, Dr. Donald Kohn, Dr. Lili Yang of UCLA, and Dr. David Baltimore from the California Institute of Technology, represents a novel strategy for treating hard-to-treat cancers, especially solid tumors that have proved to be more resistant to conventional T cell therapies.

Nowicki, assistant professor-in-residence of pediatric hematology/oncology and microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Ribas, professor of medicine and director of the tumor immunology program at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, discuss the promise of this approach and its potential to transform cancer treatment and beyond.