Reacción a "Reactions to clinical trial using CRISPR to modify patient's own T lymphocytes for cancer treatment"

It is an extraordinary work, undoubtedly one of the most advanced in the field of adoptive cellular immunotherapy (ACTI) both technically and conceptually, and opens the door to the most personalized approach possible for the treatment of tumors. This is not the first study to test the CRISPR tool for the first time to modify T lymphocytes (as the authors themselves mention, this has already been done with CART), but it is the first to do so with the patient's own T lymphocyte receptors (TCRs), thus managing to direct them against specific antigens of each tumor in each patient. 

The work defines how we can genetically modify other lymphocytes from the patient's own blood with various receptors of antitumor T lymphocytes, so that they can be directed against the tumor. The work manages to merge in one proposal the best of the three already successful ITCA approaches, the infusion of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL therapy), the use of transgenic TCRs and the genetic modification of T lymphocytes with gene editing. Although the focus on TCRs of cytotoxic CD8+ T lymphocytes is obviously a first step and leaves in second place the need to obtain TCRs for CD4+ T cells, which we know are relevant especially in long-term treatments, the proposal allows to raise a personalized treatment scenario for many tumors.  

It opens the door to using this personalized ITCA in many types of cancer and potentially in many other diseases defined by the function of the immune system. The good development of ITCA in our country (especially in CART therapy) may make it possible to provide this option to our patients in such a personalized way that it can be considered as an academic treatment.