Cancer will kill about 630,000 in the U.S. in 2020. But hopes are rising for cell therapies that can boost the natural cancer-fighting potential of the immune system in an adaptable way that simpler and more conventional small-molecule drugs cannot match.

A UCSF team led by immunologist Alex Marson, MD, PhD, along with Theo Roth, a student in the UCSF Medical Scientist Training Program, developed a breakthrough technique called non-viral genome targeting in which they used pulses of electricity (called electroporation) to quickly and efficiently program T cells using CRISPR gene-editing.

Now, in a study published April 16, 2020 in Cell, the team has used this technique to power a high-throughput screening platform to evaluate the potency of many different potential cell therapies simultaneously — comparable to the empirical approach already widely used in industry to quickly screen batches of small-molecule drug candidates.