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T-Cell Therapy: Here’s How the Latest Cancer ‘Breakthrough’ Actually Works

For many years, there were only three possible types of cancer treatment: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. In the last decade, drugs that target specific molecular changes on the surface of cancer cells have been developed, such as the drug Herceptin used for breast cancer treatment.

Now there is the promise of a fifth type of cancer treatment: immunotherapy. Instead of drugs, radiation or the surgeon's scalpel, this treatment uses the power of the patient's own immune system to kill cancer cells.

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Featured

 A ‘living’ cancer drug helped two patients stay disease-free for a decade

CAR T-cell therapy and related therapies that harness immune cells are getting closer to a 'cure' for some cancers, clinicians say.

 First patients of pioneering CAR T-cell therapy ‘cured of cancer’

Cancer-killing cells still present 10 years on, with results suggesting therapy is a cure for certain blood cancers.

 Scientists are making CAR-T cells more clever. Here’s what the next generation could look like

CAR-T cell therapy has been a boon for treating blood cancers. Since the technology was first brought to the clinic, CAR-T has offered patients months or years of life after they had exhausted all other treatment options and would have died within weeks.

Articles of Interest

A Cancer Treatment Makes Leukemia Vanish, but Creates More Mysteries

Two early recipients of CAR T immunotherapy were free of a blood cancer nearly a decade after receiving the therapy.

A Game-Changing New Cancer Treatment Is Cripplingly Expensive

The treatment utilizes a genetic process discovered through HIV research, in which the disease modifies the DNA of T cells. For the procedure, clinicians draw blood from the patient, modify the T cells, and then inject them back into the body through a blood transfusion.

An Interview with Carl June, MD, a Pioneer in CAR T-cell Therapy

The FDA approved the first immune checkpoint inhibitor, ipilimumab, in March 2011, and the first CAR T-cell therapy in August 2017. Today, the FDA has approved seven checkpoint inhibitors for a wide range of cancer types. June said that based on the time gap between checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cell therapy, he anticipates rapid growth for CAR-T in the next few years.

CAR T Cells: Engineering Patients’ Immune Cells to Treat Their Cancers

Although CAR T-cell therapies are not as widely used as immune checkpoint inhibitors, they have shown the same ability to eradicate very advanced leukemias and lymphomas and to keep the cancer at bay for many years.

Carl June, MD: How He Developed CAR-T and Reflections on Cell Therapy

Interviewed by Lily Oncology’s Kim Blackwell, MD, Parker Institute director Carl June, MD, recalls breakthrough moments in his career that led to discovering how to engineer a T-cell that can target and destroy cancer, now known as CAR-T therapy and manufactured on the market under the name Kymriah.

Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells: A Race to Revolutionize Cancer Therapy

For years, cancer treatment was dominated by chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and stem cell transplantation. New insights into genetic characteristics of leukemic cells have initiated the development of the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

Frequently Asked Questions About CAR T-Cell Therapy

Although most patients do not experience the common side effects associated with chemotherapy such as hair loss, nausea, and vomiting, there are risks of significant side effects with CAR T-cell therapy.

The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment

The treatment is known in the medical community as CAR T-cell therapy. It involves removing some T-cells—a type of white blood cell—from a patient's blood. Then researchers tweak the outside of each cell in the lab by adding a receptor called CAR (chimeric antigen receptor). When the altered T-cells are infused back into the body, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.

The Promising New Cancer Treatment Behind Gilead’s $11 Billion Deal

Kite is one of the leading companies developing CAR-T, which stands for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell, therapy. Such treatments work by extracting a cancer patient’s T-cells, a type of immune cell, genetically modifying them outside the body to make them more effective at hunting down and killing tumors, and then re-injecting them into the patient.

Why immunotherapy could be the cure to cancer we have all been waiting for

Cancer research leader Carl June on how targeting immune cells could provide potentially lifelong protection.