What is CAR-T cell therapy?
CAR-T cell therapy has recently emerged as one of the most exciting advances in cancer immunotherapy. It is a type of personalized medicine in which T cells, a type of cell in blood, are engineered for therapeutic treatment of cancers including leukemia and lymphoma.
T cells are collected and isolated from either the cancer patient or a donor and then genetically modified to recognize cancer-associated antigens or molecules which may have escaped detection from the patient’s immune system. Afterwards, the resulting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells are expanded and grown in large quantities in the lab and infused into the patient. CAR-T cells can then recognize and kill tumor cells which express cancer-specific antigens in the patient. This process is often referred to as “bench to bedside” as it delivers a research product directly to the patient.
How is CAR-T cell therapy being used today?
CAR-T cell therapy has shown great potential for the targeted treatment of various cancers, especially for patients who have relapsed or have not responded well to other treatments such as chemotherapy. In 2017, the FDA approved Kymriah, the first CAR-T cell therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and later granted approval of Yescarta for B cell lymphoma. In 2018, there are over 240 CAR-T clinical trials, with 144 trials taking place in the USA. CAR-T cell therapy continues to be at the forefront of immuno-oncology research, with the need to develop new methods and improve current technologies to increase delivery and efficacy in the clinic.
How will my donation help?
Power Paks, collected using a procedure called leukapheresis, serve as healthy control samples for researchers and replicate the apheresis collection patients undergo when receiving CAR-T cell therapy. Accessing these samples which most closely mimic how cells are processed during a clinical trial helps researchers to replicate how cells will respond once genetically modified. This means that researchers are already one step closer in the development of a new CAR-T cell therapy.
