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2022 Todd Boehly – PCF Young Investigator Award

STEAP1 Directed Next-Generation Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapies for Metastatic Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer (mCRPC)

Vipul Bhatia, PhD
Fred Hutchinson Research Center

Mentors: John K. Lee, MD, PhD, Peter Nelson, MD

Description:

  • Cancer immunotherapies that have been highly effective in other cancer types are rarely effective in prostate cancer. New strategies to optimize immunotherapy in prostate cancer are needed.
  • Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells are a type of personalized immunotherapy in which a patient’s own T cells are engineered to recognize and target their cancer. CAR T cells are highly effective in leukemias and lymphomas and are under development for other cancer types.
  • In this project, Dr. Vipul Bhatia and team are developing CAR T cells that may be more effective in prostate cancer, by targeting two prostate cancer proteins instead of one.
  • Dr. Bhatia will screen for potential alternate surface antigen, which is expressed upon STEAP1 antigen loss, and develop CAR T cells that target two proteins highly expressed on most prostate cancer cells but not normal cells and will test their efficacy in preclinical models.
  • Genome wide CRISPR screen would be performed to identify gene elements that make STEAP1 CAR T cells less fatigued and more likely to continue attacking prostate cancer.
  • If successful, this project will develop more effective next generation CAR T cells for prostate cancer and may lead to new clinical trials testing these treatments in patients.

What this means to patients: Dr. Bhatia and team are identifying new mechanism that governs resistance to existing CAR T cells and developing new CAR T cell immunotherapy for prostate cancer, that targets two prostate cancer proteins instead of one. This approach may be more effective as prostate cancer cells will be less able to evade this treatment. These preclinical studies may result in new agents that can be tested in trials and may ultimately improve outcomes in patients with prostate cancer.