There’s a new technique that may revolutionize one type of T cell therapy, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Maybe you’ve heard of CAR-T cells, a type of cell you have in your body that is supercharged in a lab and put back in to fight things like cancer. Biomedical engineering expert Jordan Green at Johns Hopkins and colleagues have developed a new way to stimulate T cells inside the body.

Green: CAR-T therapy is a way that cells can be engineered typically outside the body using viruses. The process takes time and is very expensive but then the outcomes can be transformative where these engineered cells are able to treat cancer and increasing number of diseases in new ways. What we're doing is sidestepping all of that cellular manufacturing to instead develop a new type of biodegradable particle which dissolves in water that could be injected and then does all of that same engineering in the body.   :32

Green says this particle, in combination with another molecule that enables connection with the right kind of cell, may enable specialized T cell therapy to reach many more people who might benefit. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.