What is CAR T-cell therapy?

One of the most exciting areas of research today is the field of medicine. Every day, researchers are making new breakthroughs in the way we treat and prevent diseases. In this blog, we will discuss a recent breakthrough in medicine that could have a significant impact on the treatment of cancer.

The breakthrough in question is the development of CAR T-cell therapy. CAR T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that uses the patient's own immune system to fight cancer. The therapy involves taking immune cells, called T-cells, from the patient's blood and engineering them to recognize and attack cancer cells.

The way CAR T-cell therapy works is that T-cells are removed from the patient and modified to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) on their surface. This receptor allows the T-cells to recognize specific proteins, or antigens, on cancer cells. Once the T-cells are modified, they are infused back into the patient's bloodstream, where they multiply and attack cancer cells.

CAR T-cell therapy has shown remarkable success in treating certain types of blood cancers, such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and some forms of lymphoma. In clinical trials, CAR T-cell therapy has achieved remission rates of up to 90% in patients with relapsed or refractory ALL.

In August 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first CAR T-cell therapy, called Kymriah, for the treatment of pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory ALL. Since then, other CAR T-cell therapies have been approved for the treatment of lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

While CAR T-cell therapy has shown significant promise, it is not without its challenges. The therapy can cause severe side effects, such as cytokine release syndrome, which can cause fever, low blood pressure, and organ damage. In addition, the cost of CAR T-cell therapy is very high, with some treatments costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Despite these challenges, CAR T-cell therapy represents a significant breakthrough in the treatment of cancer. It has the potential to offer a new treatment option for patients who have exhausted all other options, and it could eventually be used to treat other types of cancer. As researchers continue to refine the therapy and make it more effective and safe, CAR T-cell therapy could become a game-changer in the fight against cancer.