Duke-NUS scientists explore using ‘own’ immune cells to target infectious diseases including COVID-19

Immunotherapy utilising own immune cells might also be useful in treating other difficult diseases, such as HIV, HBV, beside cancers The engineering of specific virus-targeting receptors onto a patient’s own immune cells is now being explored by scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS), as a potential therapy for controlling infectious diseases, including the COVID-19-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2. This therapy that has revolutionised the treatment of patients with cancer has also been used in the treatment of other infectious diseases such as Hepatitis B virus (HBV), as discussed by the School’s researchers in a commentary published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. This therapy involves extracting immune cells, called T lymphocytes, from a patient’s blood stream and engineering one of two types of receptors onto them: chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) or T cell receptors (TCR). TCRs are naturally found on the surfaces of T lymphocytes while CARs are artificial T cell receptors that are...