Leveraging AI capabilities combined with genetic data led St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital investigators to predict new cancer drug targets that carry a limited risk of side effects.

Stem-cell memory T (T_SCM) cells are a rare subset of immune cells with the ability to self-renew, persist long term, and mount potent anti-tumor responses. These properties make them an attractive candidate for next-generation CAR T-cell therapies. However, their clinical potential has not previously been demonstrated in humans. An international team of researchers co-led by Professor Luca Gattinoni from the Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT) and Dr. James Kochenderfer from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), has now published a new study in Cell reporting, for the first time, that CAR T cells designed to acquire a T_SCM phenotype demonstrate a favorable safety profile and can induce complete remissions at remarkably low doses without the chemotherapy preconditioning, which is typically used in CAR T-cell therapy to enhance engraftment.

A deadly cancer, adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma, may be largely preventable through targeted maternal screening, a national study finds. Caribbean-born individuals in the U.S. face rates more than 30 times higher, driven by a virus passed from mother to child—highlighting a clear, missed opportunity for prevention.