UChicago Medicine Trials Homegrown Engineered T-Cell Therapy for Advanced Solid Tumors

A major academic medical center has taken a step that relatively few institutions in the United States can claim to have made on their own. Researchers at UChicago Medicine have launched a first-of-its-kind clinical trial of a personalized cell therapy that was conceived, designed, manufactured and will be administered entirely on campus, without relying on a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company to produce the therapeutic cells. The Phase 1/2A study will test the experimental treatment’s safety and early effectiveness in patients with metastatic ovarian cancer and several other advanced solid tumors, a category of disease that has stubbornly resisted the cell therapy revolution that has transformed the outlook for many blood cancers. The trial, registered as NCT07389239, represents the convergence of decades of laboratory research, specialized manufacturing infrastructure and clinical expertise, and it signals a growing ambition among academic centers to drive early-stage cancer immunotherapy development from bench to bedside under their own roof.

Cell therapy is one of the most promising advances in modern cancer treatment. The basic concept involves collecting a patient’s own immune cells, genetically reprogramming them in the laboratory so they recognize cancer more effectively, and then infusing them back into the patient’s body. Once circulating, these enhanced immune cells are designed to seek out and destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue largely untouched. The approach has already produced remarkable results in certain blood cancers, where engineered CAR T-cell therapies have driven durable remissions in patients who had exhausted conventional options. Translating that success to solid tumors, however, has proven far more difficult. Solid tumors build defensive microenvironments that suppress immune activity, physically exclude T cells and exhaust the cells that do manage to infiltrate. The new UChicago Medicine trial is designed specifically to confront those barriers, combining tumor recognition with engineered resistance to the immunosuppressive signals that tumors deploy.

The scientific foundation of the treatment differs in an important way from existing CAR T-cell platforms. Conventional CAR T cells use engineered synthetic receptors that recognize proteins displayed on the surface of cancer cells. The UChicago team, by contrast, is using specially engineered T-cell receptors, the natural antigen-recognition machinery of the immune system, which allow immune cells to detect protein fragments presented from inside cancer cells. This distinction matters enormously for the range of cancers that can be targeted. Many of the most attractive tumor-associated proteins are not displayed on the cell surface but are processed internally and presented on major histocompatibility complex molecules, invisible to CAR constructs but perfectly visible to a properly directed T-cell receptor. By exploiting this intracellular surveillance pathway, the researchers dramatically expand the universe of tumors that engineered cell therapies might plausibly attack.

Richard Koya, MD, PhD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UChicago Medicine, is the scientific investigator who developed the treatment and designed the clinical trial on the basis of many years of laboratory research. He framed the strategy as an extension of the immune system’s own logic. The team, he explained, is using the same natural process the immune system relies on to fight infections, but redirecting it to attack cancer. The stated goal is to create immune cells that can recognize cancer more effectively, survive longer and continue fighting the disease over time. That emphasis on persistence reflects a central lesson of immunotherapy research: engineered cells that fade quickly or become dysfunctional inside tumors rarely produce lasting benefit, whereas cells that endure and form immune memory may hold tumors in check long after the initial infusion.

The treatment protocol unfolds in several carefully sequenced stages. Doctors will first collect a patient’s white blood cells through a process similar to blood donation. Patients will then receive the chemotherapy drug decitabine, chosen for a specific biological effect: it increases the production of a cancer protein called NY-ESO-1, a target found in many tumors but absent from healthy adult tissues. This priming step is intended to make tumor cells more visible to the engineered immune cells that will follow. In the laboratory, researchers will then genetically engineer the patient’s immune cells with two critical features. The first is a T-cell receptor that recognizes NY-ESO-1, equipping the cells to identify and attack cancer. The second is a genetic modification that blocks TGF-beta, a signaling molecule that normally suppresses immune responses and contributes to T-cell exhaustion inside tumors, one of the principal reasons cell therapies have underperformed against solid disease.

Once the engineering is complete, the enhanced immune cells will be infused back into the patient through an intravenous line, much like a blood transfusion. Patients will also receive a low dose of interleukin-2, an immune-boosting drug that helps the engineered T cells multiply and remain active after they enter the body. The investigators plan to infuse approximately one billion engineered T cells into each patient, a dose intended to generate a powerful and durable immune response against cancers that currently have few effective treatment options. Researchers believe this combination, antigen targeting, resistance to suppressive signaling and cytokine support, could produce a stronger and longer-lasting immune response because it addresses one of the biggest challenges in solid tumor treatment: the hostile tumor environment that often weakens cancer-fighting immune cells before they can eliminate the tumor. By engineering T cells to resist signals such as TGF-beta, the team hopes the cells will persist longer, develop lasting immune memory and continue attacking tumors over time.

The trial’s design and execution are notable for their institutional provenance. This is an investigator-initiated clinical trial, meaning the treatment was conceived and developed by University of Chicago researchers rather than a commercial sponsor. The UChicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, which operates one of the nation’s largest cancer clinical trials programs, has extensive experience translating laboratory discoveries into early-stage clinical studies, and that infrastructure is now being applied to a therapy the institution controls end to end. Critically, the engineered cells will be produced in UChicago Medicine’s Good Manufacturing Practices facility, a highly specialized laboratory that meets strict federal standards for producing cell therapies. On-site manufacturing allows researchers to oversee every step of the process, maintain quality control and accelerate the translation of discoveries from the laboratory to patients, a capability that very few academic medical centers possess.

Koya emphasized the strategic value of that capability. Very few academic medical centers, he noted, have the ability to manufacture personalized cell therapies entirely on-site, and he described the arrangement as giving the team tremendous flexibility to rapidly test new ideas and move promising treatments to patients. That flexibility is particularly consequential in the fast-moving field of cellular immunotherapy, where iterative design changes, new receptor constructs and combination strategies often emerge faster than commercial pipelines can accommodate. An academic GMP facility effectively shortens the distance between a laboratory observation and a patient-ready product, allowing investigators to refine the therapy across successive cohorts in ways that industry-sponsored trials, bound by fixed manufacturing contracts and regulatory timelines, often cannot.

The Phase 1/2A trial will evaluate the experimental therapy in a small group of patients with metastatic ovarian cancer, soft tissue sarcoma, bladder cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, melanoma or non-small cell lung cancer, all cancers that form solid tumors and all diseases in which effective options narrow sharply once the disease has spread. Beginning in October 2026, screening for eligible patients will take place at UChicago Medicine locations in Hyde Park, New Lenox, Harvey, Flossmoor, Calumet City and Tinley Park in Illinois, and Crown Point in Indiana, with treatment taking place at the main campus in Hyde Park. UChicago Medicine oncologist Daniel Olson, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, is the clinical investigator overseeing the trial, while Thinle Chodon, MD, PhD, research professor, is overseeing production of the engineered cells in the institution’s GMP facility. The division of roles between clinical leadership and manufacturing oversight reflects the operational complexity of personalized cell therapy, in which each patient’s product is a bespoke biological medicine.

The launch arrives as UChicago Medicine continues to expand its cancer care and research enterprise. The institution was among the first medical centers in the country to offer FDA-approved CAR T-cell therapy for adults and children with certain blood cancers, and more recently became one of the first centers to provide tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for advanced melanoma, establishing a track record at the leading edge of cellular immunology. In April 2027, UChicago Medicine will open the AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion, Chicago’s first freestanding cancer pavilion, intended to bring advanced diagnostics, innovative treatments, translational discoveries and comprehensive support services to patients and the surrounding community. For patients with advanced solid tumors, the new trial offers something more immediate: a chance to access an immunotherapy approach that targets hidden tumor proteins, resists the suppressive forces of the tumor microenvironment and is produced by the same institution treating them, a model of academic self-reliance that may shape how the next generation of cancer cell therapies reaches the clinic.

Subject of Research: A Phase 1/2A clinical trial of an investigator-developed engineered T-cell receptor therapy targeting NY-ESO-1 for advanced solid tumors

Article Title: UChicago Medicine launches homegrown cell therapy for advanced solid tumors

Article References: UChicago Medicine launches homegrown cell therapy for advanced solid tumors. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: cell therapy, T-cell receptor, solid tumors, NY-ESO-1, TGF-beta, ovarian cancer, CAR T-cell therapy, GMP manufacturing, clinical trial, immunotherapy, decitabine, interleukin-2