UBC Researchers Unlock Scalable Generation of Helper T Cells for Next‑Gen Cell Therapies

Published 2026-01-21

Scientists at the University of British Columbia School of Biomedical Engineering have overcome a longstanding obstacle in immune cell engineering by developing a controlled method to derive functional helper T cells from human pluripotent stem cells, a breakthrough that promises to make off-the-shelf regenerative cancer immunotherapies more accessible and cost-effective; the team’s findings were published on January 7, 2026, in Cell Stem Cell and address a key manufacturing bottleneck by enabling reliable production of immune “conductor” cells critical for orchestrating durable anti-tumor responses.