In the latest work from the lab of Khalid Shah, MS, Ph.D., at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, investigators have developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system so that it can prevent cancer from recurring.The team tested their dual-action, cancer-killing vaccine in an advanced mouse model of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, with promising results.We repurposed the tumor cells from interferon-β (IFN-β) sensitive to resistant using CRISPR-Cas9 by knocking out the IFN-β–specific receptor and subsequently engineered them to release immunomodulatory agents IFN-β and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor.These engineered therapeutic tumor cells (ThTCs) eliminated established glioblastoma tumors in mice by inducing caspase-mediated cancer cell apoptosis, down-regulating cancer-associated fibroblast-expressed platelet-derived growth factor receptor β, and activating antitumor immune cell trafficking and antigen-specific T cell activation signaling.The incorporation of a double kill-switch comprising herpes simplex virus–1 thymidine kinase and rapamycin-activated caspase 9 in ThTCs ensured the safety of our approach."