Dr. Cohen on Potential With CAR T-Cell Therapy in Medullary Thyroid Cancer

Roger B. Cohen, MD, is a professor of medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and associate director of clinical research at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center. Along with his colleagues at Penn, he is investigating a novel CAR T-cell product as a treatment for adults with medullary thyroid cancer (MTC).

MTC is a rare disease, accounting for 1% to 2% of thyroid cancer cases. The prognosis for these patients is poor, and there are few treatment options for those with relapsed/refractory disease.

CAR T-cell thearapies have had limited success in solid cancers, but Donald Siegel, MD, PhD, at Penn, has discovered a unique protein, GFRα4, that is expressed only on MTC cells. Dr Cohen explains how this protein provides a target for GFRα4 CAR T-cells in patients with MTC.