Are CAR-T cells coming into their own as therapeutic agents? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Specially engineered T cells, one component of immune cells in your body, are called CAR-T cells, and for several years now have been used to treat blood cancers and some other conditions, with some success. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says a number of issues were apparent at the onset.

Nelson: CAR-T cells when they were originally introduced for treating HIV. One of the challenges was that when they were genetically engineered, this is to remove the immune cells from the body by a process of pheresis to genetically engineer them to go after a very specific target and then reinfuse them, they didn’t live very long when you did that. Current generation of them, they managed to get them to live long enough to have a fair amount of success. Having said that they haven't been that helpful at all treating most solid organ cancers.         :27

Now new advances using CAR-T cells engineered from donors may further expand their clinical utility, Nelson says. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.