Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania received a $400,000 grant from the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation (CFCF), a non-profit that funds research for carcinoid, pancreatic, and related neuroendocrine cancers (NETS), to investigate the use of an experimental gene therapy that engineers immune cells to attack cancers.

The award is part of a larger immunotherapy initiative from CFCF, which is awarding a total of $2 million to immunotherapy projects at institutions across the country.

The Penn award will support research by Carl June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and director of Translational Research in the Abramson Cancer Center, neuroendocrine tumor researcher Xianxin Hua, MD, PhD, professor of Cancer Biology at Penn, and David Metz, MD, professor of Medicine and co-director of the Neuroendocrine Tumor Center at Penn. They aim to develop chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and will evaluate their ability to kill neuroendocrine tumor cells, a method that has shown promising initial results in clinical trials in patients with other cancers.

There are currently over 100,000 people in the U.S. living with neuroendocrine cancers, and there is no cure. The majority of all neuroendocrine cancer patients are initially misdiagnosed, and the time from onset of symptoms to proper diagnosis often exceeds five years.