Questão 2605624

Leia o texto para responder às questões de números 11 a 13.

Immunotherapy clinical trial tests therapy

for metastatic solid tumors

Summary Posted: July 17, 2020

Before and after CT scan images of the liver of a patient with metastatic breast cancer (arrows) who was treated with T cells that recognized mutations in her tumor. Photo courtesy of Steve Rosenberg

People 18–70 years old with metastatic solid tumors that have not responded to standard treatments may be eligible to participate in a clinical trial at the NIH Clinical Center.

Some people have solid tumors that have spread, or metastasized, and have not responded to standard treatments. Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of the Surgery Branch, is leading a study of a new treatment for these cancer patients. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are white blood cells (T cells) that have moved from the blood into a tumor. Tumor cells frequently change their molecular structure to avoid attack by the immune system’s T cells. Recent studies by the Surgery Branch have found that most TILs don’t recognize newly mutated tumor cells. Yet, a very small number of TILs do recognize recent mutations in certain proteins within tumor cells and are able to attack these cells. The scientists in the Surgery Branch can extract information from that very small number of cells and genetically engineer a larger number of T cells to recognize the mutations. Patients in this study will undergo leukapheresis, where a small tube in one arm will remove blood and send it to a machine that will separate white blood cells from the rest of the blood. The blood will then be returned to the patient through a tube in the other arm. In a laboratory, the special T cells that can recognize newly altered cancer cells will be grown in large numbers then given back to the patient to help the immune system kill cancer cells. Investigators want to see if this gene transfer therapy can shrink solid tumors for patients with non-small cell lung cancer, breast cancer, gastrointestinal/ genitourinary cancer or ovarian cancer.

(https://ccr.cancer.gov. Adaptado)

In the excerpt from the second paragraph “Patients in this study will undergo leukapheresis”, the expression in bold means