Posted: 7 July 2025
Researchers at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre have advanced efforts to harness CAR T-cell therapy against solid tumour cancers, overcoming a major barrier that had limited the treatment’s use beyond blood cancers.
The team, led by Professor Phil Darcy and Dr Ian Parish, had focused on enhancing the efficacy of CAR T cells by modifying their environment to improve tumour targeting and destruction. While CAR T-cell therapy had transformed outcomes in certain blood cancers, its effectiveness against solid tumours such as breast, lung, and colorectal cancers had remained minimal due to the suppressive nature of the tumour microenvironment.
Dr Parish had emphasised that understanding these immune suppression mechanisms within solid tumours was critical. “This research shows that by modifying how CAR T cells function in the tumour environment, we can greatly enhance their anti-cancer effects,” he had explained. “By engineering CAR T cells to resist inhibitory signals, we are enabling them to maintain their activity and eliminate cancer cells more effectively,” Professor Phil Darcy had stated.
Findings from the study had been published in Cancer Cell and had attracted significant interest for clinical translation. Funding support had been provided by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Cancer Council Victoria, and the Snowdome Foundation to advance this research towards early-phase human trials.
Solid tumours continue to represent a leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally. The Peter Mac team’s work had laid vital groundwork for developing CAR T-cell therapies to expand treatment options for patients with hard-to-treat cancers.
Further studies had been planned to confirm safety and efficacy in human subjects, with hopes that this approach would become part of standard cancer care in the future.
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