Revolutionizing Cancer Treatment with Custom T-Cells: Mirjam Heemskerk’s Inaugural Lecture

Heemskerk’s inaugural lecture is about the research topic on which she herself has been working for 25 years. A subject that Heemskerk thought of from the start, there is potential in it and she has stuck to it all these years. “When I started as a researcher in the Hematology department of the LUMC, I had big dreams. Not only did I want to study and better understand the immune system, but I also wanted to use it to attack and clear up tumors,” explains Heemskerk.

Custom T cells

In her inaugural lecture, Heemskerk talks about the living medicine she is working on. A medicine that should cure people with cancer using their own immune system. They have already reached the stage with the research into this medicine that the Heemskerk research group, together with the doctors from the LUMC, can bring this medicine to the clinic and therefore to the patient. In other words, it is actually used as a medicine, still in study form, of course. But what exactly are we talking about?

In short, immune cells are taken from a patient with cancer, the so-called T cells. These T cells are edited in the lab and then these modified T cells are returned to the patient within seven to 10 days. Editing the immune cells means that the T cells are genetically modified in such a way that they recognize, attack and destroy cancer cells. Normally, T cells in our body have the task of clearing virus-infected cells, they do this with specific recognition structures. Research has shown that T cells equipped with recognition structures that recognize tumors can be used to attack and destroy cancer cells.

Recognition structures as feelers

In recent years, Heemskerk and her research group have been looking for new recognition structures that can be placed in immune cells so that the altered T cells can recognize specific tumor cells very specifically. And they have now found about 25 of them. “The recognition structures we are looking for are actually a kind of feelers that are on the immune cells,” explains Heemskerk. “In order to develop an effective drug for every cancer type and every patient, many cancer-specific recognition structures are necessary. In addition, we know that cancer cells can escape single therapies and it is important that cancer cells are attacked in multiple ways at the same time.” For the living medicine that Heemskerk is working on, the patient’s immune cells are equipped with new recognition structures depending on the characteristics of the patient and the characteristics of the cancer type. A personalized living medicine.

Heemskerk: “We call it a living medicine because living T cells are returned to the patient. These T-cells recognize the cancer cells and kill them, but these T-cells can also multiply in the patient’s body so that they remain present for a long time. That is an advantage over other cancer drugs. With the usual therapies against cancer, the cancer has disappeared over time and you are ‘tumor-free’. But often the cancer will come back. With this living medicine, we hope that when the cancer cells come back, the T cells will get back to work to clear up the cancer cells. The adapted T-cells therefore only need to be injected once. And then we come to the viability of the drug.”

Wider applicability

In the coming years, we will investigate how we can improve the lifespan of the T cells so that the T cells can do their job for a longer period of time. It will also be investigated whether the drug can be used more broadly so that not only patients with leukemia and lymphoma can be treated, but also patients with multiple myeloma, or Kahler’s disease. We are also trying to develop the living medicine for patients with solid tumors such as skin cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and prostate cancer. Actually any cancer.” A great development that Heemskerk talks about extensively in her inaugural lecture.

Mirjam Heemskerk’s inaugural lecture can be followed live on Friday 2 June from 4 p.m. on the website of the university of Leiden.