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Parker Cancer ends here

Research Focus Area

Next-Gen Cell Therapies: Taking on Solid Tumors

How it works

CAR-T therapy involves taking T cells — the immune system’s attack cells — out of a patient’s body, engineering them in a lab to recognize and destroy cancer cells, then infusing them back in. This approach has been transformative in the treatment of blood cancers, because those cancer cells have clear molecular “flags” to target. Solid tumors — the kind that form in organs like the lungs, pancreas, or colon — are a harder problem. They lack easy targets, are physically harder for engineered T cells to penetrate, and are surrounded by a hostile environment that can exhaust and disable the engineered T cells before they do their job.

Why it matters

Solid tumors represent the overwhelming majority of cancer deaths. Solving this problem with cell therapy would be one of the most significant advances in the history of oncology.

What we’re doing

  • Pioneering "logic gate" cell therapies that only activate when they detect multiple cancer-specific signals simultaneously, reducing the risk of attacking healthy tissue. This work, developed at UCSF, is now in advanced clinical development through Arsenal Biosciences.
  • Developing "armored" CAR-T cells with enhanced potency, longevity, and resistance to exhaustion, then spinning out the most promising candidates into dedicated biotech companies, including 3T Biosciences and Moonlight Bio.
  • Advancing Dispatch Biotherapeutics' approach to implanting synthetic targets inside tumor cells, giving engineered T cells something precise to attack — a potential solution to both the targeting and resistance problems in solid tumors.
  • Conducting the first-in-human trial of a non-viral, CRISPR-engineered CAR-T cell therapy for multiple myeloma, led by Parker investigators at UCSF.

What’s next

  • Moving beyond single-target therapies toward approaches that attack cancer on multiple fronts simultaneously, making it harder for tumors to develop resistance.
  • Developing alternative cell types (such as iPSC-derived cells and NK cells) that could be manufactured in advance and used for any patient, without the time and cost of collecting and processing each patient's own cells.
  • Driving down the cost and complexity of manufacturing, so cell therapy can reach more patients, more quickly.