CAR T-cell therapy can be a useful tool for treating cancer. Federica Ciummo, a Northeastern student pursuing her master’s degree in cell and gene therapies, spent her summer working at a lab in Spain, focusing on this innovative approach.
Federica Ciummo's Experience
Ciummo's main interest is in genetics. In the first year of her master’s degree program, she took a course in immunology and fell in love, especially as she realized how tied it is to cell and gene therapy. Luckily, Ciummo had a connection at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center who was interested in taking her on as a co-op. Ciummo was particularly interested in learning more about CAR T-cell therapy for T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (TALL) after attending a lecture about this at Northeastern.
“When I was talking to the lab to see if they were a good fit, they were explaining the work they were doing (on this) and I was like ‘whoa,’” she said. “It was the kind of excitement you get when you’re a little kid."
The Lab's Focus
The lab Ciummo worked at focused on the modulation of T-cells to combat TALL, testing CAR T constructs which are a common therapy for blood cancers. CAR T-cell therapy “absolutely revolutionized” the field of blood cancer treatments, Ciummo said, and is being used more in clinical trials.
How CAR T-Cell Therapy Works: An Animation for Kids
Limitations and Side Effects
However, Ciummo explained that this type of therapy has two shortcomings. But it has limitations so far as the serious side effects it can cause. It can cause a really intense burst of toxic chemicals called cytokines that attack and kill cells. This is great for killing cancer, but the release can become so excessive that it causes something called cytokine release syndrome where the immune system overreacts and starts attacking healthy cells.
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“We basically put a new receptor on the surface of a T-cell,” Ciummo explained. "This reduces the rejection and increases the lifespan because it’s less odd to the cell,” Ciummo continued. “Anytime you modulate a cell with something that doesn’t naturally exist, there’s a tendency (for other cells) to kill it off. The construct we were developing was more natural."
Daily Work in the Lab
On many days, she’d get to the lab and go to the culture room to see if cells needed passaging - being moved so they had space to grow. The team would also run experiments with flow cytometry where they passed cultures through a machine to see the percentage of cells tagged with a certain marker. They could also see where cells were in their cycle and different levels of effectiveness.
“We would spend hours doing that,” Ciummo said. “The thing I liked the most was the group I was with felt like a little family. Everyone was running their own study, but yet everyone helped each other with their stuff all the time."
Future Implications
“I’ve always worked in oncology and I’ve taken a pretty strong interest in how we can apply these therapies to treat cancer,” she said. “If I become a doctor, to not stay up to date on research is to be a bad doctor in that field.
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