Weizmann and WashU scientists turn cancer-fighting CAR-T cells against Alzheimer's plaques

Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reported on 9 February 2026 that they had adapted CAR-T cell therapy, a treatment that transformed care for some blood cancers, to attack the protein plaques that build up in the brain in Alzheimer's disease. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Prof. Ido Amit of Weizmann's Department of Systems Immunology and Prof. Jonathan Kipnis of Washington University, with postdoctoral researcher Pavle Boskovic carrying out much of the work.

CAR-T therapy works by taking a patient's T cells, a type of immune cell, and fitting them with an engineered receptor that steers them toward a chosen target. The team engineered T cells from healthy mice so that they would recognise amyloid-beta, the sticky protein whose deposits are a hallmark of Alzheimer's. When the cells were given to mice whose brains already contained amyloid plaques, the animals showed a significant drop in plaque deposits and in markers of inflammation in brain tissue. Kipnis described the result as the first CAR-T approach for a neurodegenerative disease.

The work has a strong Weizmann lineage. The CAR-T concept was pioneered at the institute by the late immunologist Zelig Eshhar, whose research in the late 1980s and 1990s laid the groundwork for therapies now approved for leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Amit told the Times of Israel that Eshhar's invention had huge potential beyond cancer and that his team had taken it a step further.

The findings are a proof of concept in mice, and the researchers caution that much more work is needed before any human testing. They say the same platform could eventually be used to deliver growth factors that help the brain repair itself, and might be explored for other conditions such as ALS, Parkinson's disease and acute brain injury.