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KAIST Develops Injectable Cancer Therapy That Turns Immune Cells Into Tumor Fighters

Prime Highlight

  • Scientists at KAIST created a new cancer treatment that injects a drug directly into tumors, converting inactive immune cells into CAR-macrophages that attack cancer.
  • The method eliminates the need for complex lab-based cell modification, offering a faster, scalable approach to treat solid tumors like lung, liver, and stomach cancer.

Key Facts

  • In animal studies of melanoma, the therapy significantly slowed tumor growthand showed potential for a body-wide immune response.
  • The treatment uses lipid nanoparticles loaded with mRNA and immune-activating compounds, which are absorbed by macrophages already present in the tumor.

Background

Scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a new cancer treatment that uses a simple injection to turn inactive immune cells inside tumors into powerful cancer fighters.

The team, led by Professor Ji-Ho Park from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, injected a specially designed drug directly into tumours. The drug was absorbed by macrophages, immune cells that naturally gather around cancer. Once inside the cells, the drug prompted them to produce cancer-recognising CAR proteins, converting them into “CAR-macrophages” that attack tumour cells.

This breakthrough removes the need to extract immune cells from a patient, modify them in a lab, and reinfuse them, a process that is slow, costly, and hard to scale.

Solid tumours such as lung, liver and stomach cancers are difficult to treat because they form dense structures that block immune cells. While CAR-based therapies have shown promise, they struggle to work well in these environments.

To solve this problem, the researchers used lipid nanoparticles loaded with mRNA and immune-activating compounds. Scientists engineered these nanoparticles so that macrophages already in the tumor can easily take them in.

After injection, the macrophages absorbed the nanoparticles and began producing CAR proteins. At the same time, immune signalling increased, helping nearby immune cells join the fight.

In animal studies of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, the treatment significantly slowed tumour growth. The researchers also observed signs that the immune response could spread beyond the treated tumour, offering possible body-wide protection.

Professor Park stated, “This study demonstrates a new immunotherapy approach that produces anticancer cells inside the patient’s body.” He added that the method overcomes major limits of existing CAR-macrophage therapies, including delivery problems and the tumour’s immune-suppressing environment.

The study, led by Jun-Hee Han, PhD, was published on November 18 in ACS Nano and was supported by Korea’s National Research Foundation.