Lifesaving Cancer Treatment Without Life-Threatening Side Effects

“By identifying existing drugs that may be repurposed, we hope to accelerate the development of safer treatment strategies for patients receiving these lifesaving therapies,” says lead author Atena Zahedi, UC Irvine assistant professor of clinical pharmacy practice. From left: Onwodi Ifejeokwu, Zahedi, Shawn Griffin and Dr. Erin Dean. Steve Zylius / UC Irvine

• UC Irvine researchers highlight mitochondrial dysfunction as a promising target for reducing a serious neurological complication of CAR T-cell therapy in cancer patients.
• The study outlines how existing drugs could be repurposed as safer alternatives to steroids in addressing this complication.
• The research provides a road map for future clinical evaluation.

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 18, 2026 —  CAR T-cell therapy has transformed cancer care, offering new hope to patients with aggressive blood cancers who once had few treatment options. But for some patients, the powerful immunotherapy can trigger a potentially life-threatening complication that causes brain inflammation, confusion, seizures and other serious neurological symptoms.

Researchers at UC Irvine have developed a new framework that could help make CAR T-cell therapy safer by targeting the biological processes believed to drive this complication. Published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, the study stresses that mitochondrial dysfunction is a key contributor to immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS) and outlines how existing drugs could potentially be repurposed to treat it.

Rather than developing an entirely new medication, the researchers propose evaluating drugs that already have established safety profiles, potentially accelerating the path toward clinical testing and improving outcomes for cancer patients.

“Our work points to mitochondrial dysfunction as a promising therapeutic target for one of the most serious neurological complications of CAR T-cell therapy,” says lead author Atena Zahedi, assistant professor of clinical pharmacy practice in UC Irvine’s School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. “By identifying existing drugs that may be repurposed, we hope to accelerate the development of safer treatment strategies for patients receiving these lifesaving therapies.”

In CAR T-cell therapy, a patient’s immune cells are extracted and enhanced with chimeric antigen receptors, enabling them to recognize and destroy cancer when reintroduced into the body. While the treatment has produced remarkable results for many blood cancers, the intense immune response it generates can sometimes lead to immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome, a complication that affects the brain and nervous system.

Today, clinicians primarily rely on corticosteroids to control the inflammation. Although effective for many patients, steroids can produce significant side effects and may not address the underlying biological mechanisms driving ICANS.

For co-author, Onwodi Ifejeokwu, graduate student in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, this work is personal. She lost a family member in 2021 to B cell lymphoma. Over the course of treatment, she witnessed firsthand how devastating cancer treatment can be on the brain. This loss spurred her passion for neuro-immuno-oncology research. She works alongside her mentors Zahedi, Dean and Griffin to improve the quality of life for cancer patients.

The interdisciplinary UC Irvine team members instead focused on mitochondria, the structures inside cells responsible for producing energy and regulating immune function. Their research suggests that when mitochondria become dysfunctional, they may amplify the inflammatory response that contributes to neurological injury after CAR T-cell therapy.

Read the full press release in UC Irvine News.