Will solid tumors now be treated with CAR-T cells? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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You’ve probably heard of CAR-T cells, a type of immune cells taken from someone’s body, grown up in a lab and trained to attack their cancer. CAR-Ts are known to be good for treating blood cancers like leukemia, and for the first time they’ve been used against a so-called solid tumor, stomach cancer. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins explains.

Nelson: This one is aimed at to something called claudin 18 which is on the surface of stomach cancers, many stomach cancer cells. They took folks and these people were pretty sick, they had advanced stomach cancers, they had 2-3 oftentimes lines of treatment before and the cancer was still progressing. And what they saw with the CAR-T cell infusions was a small but significant benefit. the very important first step in the logic of CAR-T cells.           :27

Nelson says this success opens the door for exploring using CAR-Ts for other solid tumors like breast or prostate. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.