The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is a brand fresh way treat cancer.
The FDA approved a fresh immunotherapy treatment for cancer. It’s approval marks the very first genetically-modified therapy to reach market.
Today, the Food and Drug Administration approved a brand fresh type of cancer treatment: One that employs the body’s immune system—a method known as immunotherapy—to fight cancer. This approval marks the very first use of gene editing to treat disease in the United States. For now, the therapy (originally called CAR T-cell immunotherapy and now named Kymriah by Novartis), is approved to treat children and youthful adults (up to age 25) with a recurrent form of the the blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Despite its restricted use, this treatment marks a fresh era for cancer treatment. The therapy is unique and customized: Each patient’s own cells are re-engineered in a lab to fight cancer and sent back into their bods to go to work. With more research and clinical trials, which are presently ongoing, this personalized therapy has the potential to treat a broad diversity of blood and solid tumor cancers.
What is the therapy and how does it work?
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 assets, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.
CAR T-cell therapy was invented by a group of scientists, including Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania, about a half decade ago. It hit the public eye when doctors used it on a youthfull dame named Emily Whitehead, a then six-year-old with a relapsed and aggressive form of ALL. The experimental treatment worked—Emily is now twelve and cancer-free—and sparked a number of clinical trials and partnerships with drug companies, including Novartis.
When CAR T-cell works, it truly works. June told Popular Science during a two thousand sixteen interview that these drugs are so good at finding and attacking leukemia cells that he calls them "killer T-cells." He recalled one patient who didn’t see improvement until about one month after he received his engineered T-cells. Then, all of a unexpected, his condition improved drastically. When doctors traced which T-cells were involved, they found that every engineered CAR T-cell in his figure had descended from just one single transfused cell. "We infused one hundred million into him," said June, "and just one of them did all the mighty lifting."
Why is it so different from other cancer treatments?
Traditional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation only target the cancer cells and tumors themselves. You need different types of drugs depending on the type of cancer, and once you stop providing a person the treatment, it quickly leaves the assets or stops working. This treatment, and all immunotherapies to a certain extent, target the person’s immune system and corset it to fight the cancer. In theory, it works just like a vaccine: once the immune system is coaxed into fighting the unhealthy cells, it should keep fighting them for a lifetime. That’s the idea, anyway—there’s still a lot of research to do.
Is it safe?
The therapy is not without its dangers. One of the fattest obstacles doctors and researchers face is treating the immune response that comes with the treatment. When you catch the flu or another type of infection, the fevers, aches, and anguishes that you get are not from the invading bacteria or virus itself, but from your immune system revving up and fighting against it. The same thing happens with this treatment (and to a varying degree with other immunotherapies, too).
When a person receives engineered T-cells, the jolt to their immune system causes utterly high fevers and increases in proteins involved in inflammation. This can be very dangerous. But if the immune system doesn’t generate this massive response, that means the treatment isn’t working. So doctors are working now to figure out a way to deal with and control these side effects without compromising the effectiveness of the treatment.
Can it help all cancer patients?
Right now, the drug is approved only for ALL at a puny number of cancer centers across the country, and under very specific conditions: For people aged three to twenty five with relapsed ALL that has not responded to conventional therapy. Since leukemia is a cancer of the blood, it’s relatively effortless for engineered T-cells delivered via blood infusion to find, invade, and kill the diseased cells. That’s why doctors have been focusing on that cancer, as well as other types of leukemias, before attempting to thrust the treatment forward for cancers in other parts of the figure.
Figuring out how to use the treatment on other types of cancer, including ones outside the blood that create solid tumors, is the next big hurdle for scientists to clear. The problem, according to June, is that in cancers that create tumors, the bad cells are truly good at keeping invaders out of the growing mass. In pancreatic cancer, for example, the cancer cells basically build a wall around the tumor, which poses a problem for T-cells attempting to get to it. That’s also true for brain cancers. To make CAR T-cell therapy a viable option for those patients, scientists will have to figure out how to securely break down those walls.
In principle, June said, all forms of cancer can be targeted by immunotherapies. We just need to figure out how to get the treatments where they need to go—and how to keep cancer patients safe from their own immune systems.
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment, Popular Science
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is a brand fresh way treat cancer.
The FDA approved a fresh immunotherapy treatment for cancer. It’s approval marks the very first genetically-modified therapy to reach market.
Today, the Food and Drug Administration approved a brand fresh type of cancer treatment: One that employs the body’s immune system—a method known as immunotherapy—to fight cancer. This approval marks the very first use of gene editing to treat disease in the United States. For now, the therapy (primarily called CAR T-cell immunotherapy and now named Kymriah by Novartis), is approved to treat children and youthfull adults (up to age 25) with a recurrent form of the the blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Despite its restricted use, this treatment marks a fresh era for cancer treatment. The therapy is unique and customized: Each patient’s own cells are re-engineered in a lab to fight cancer and sent back into their figures to go to work. With more research and clinical trials, which are presently ongoing, this personalized therapy has the potential to treat a broad multiplicity of blood and solid tumor cancers.
What is the therapy and how does it work?
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 figure, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.
CAR T-cell therapy was invented by a group of scientists, including Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania, about a half decade ago. It hit the public eye when doctors used it on a youthful lady named Emily Whitehead, a then six-year-old with a relapsed and aggressive form of ALL. The experimental treatment worked—Emily is now twelve and cancer-free—and sparked a number of clinical trials and partnerships with drug companies, including Novartis.
When CAR T-cell works, it indeed works. June told Popular Science during a two thousand sixteen interview that these drugs are so good at finding and attacking leukemia cells that he calls them "killer T-cells." He recalled one patient who didn’t see improvement until about one month after he received his engineered T-cells. Then, all of a unexpected, his condition improved drastically. When doctors traced which T-cells were involved, they found that every engineered CAR T-cell in his figure had descended from just one single transfused cell. "We infused one hundred million into him," said June, "and just one of them did all the strenuous lifting."
Why is it so different from other cancer treatments?
Traditional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation only target the cancer cells and tumors themselves. You need different types of drugs depending on the type of cancer, and once you stop providing a person the treatment, it quickly leaves the assets or stops working. This treatment, and all immunotherapies to a certain extent, target the person’s immune system and corset it to fight the cancer. In theory, it works just like a vaccine: once the immune system is coaxed into fighting the unhealthy cells, it should keep fighting them for a lifetime. That’s the idea, anyway—there’s still a lot of research to do.
Is it safe?
The therapy is not without its dangers. One of the fattest obstacles doctors and researchers face is treating the immune response that comes with the treatment. When you catch the flu or another type of infection, the fevers, aches, and anguishes that you get are not from the invading bacteria or virus itself, but from your immune system revving up and fighting against it. The same thing happens with this treatment (and to a varying degree with other immunotherapies, too).
When a person receives engineered T-cells, the jolt to their immune system causes utterly high fevers and increases in proteins involved in inflammation. This can be very dangerous. But if the immune system doesn’t generate this massive response, that means the treatment isn’t working. So doctors are working now to figure out a way to deal with and control these side effects without compromising the effectiveness of the treatment.
Can it help all cancer patients?
Right now, the drug is approved only for ALL at a petite number of cancer centers across the country, and under very specific conditions: For people aged three to twenty five with relapsed ALL that has not responded to conventional therapy. Since leukemia is a cancer of the blood, it’s relatively effortless for engineered T-cells delivered via blood infusion to find, invade, and kill the diseased cells. That’s why doctors have been focusing on that cancer, as well as other types of leukemias, before attempting to thrust the treatment forward for cancers in other parts of the figure.
Figuring out how to use the treatment on other types of cancer, including ones outside the blood that create solid tumors, is the next big hurdle for scientists to clear. The problem, according to June, is that in cancers that create tumors, the bad cells are truly good at keeping invaders out of the growing mass. In pancreatic cancer, for example, the cancer cells basically build a wall around the tumor, which poses a problem for T-cells attempting to get to it. That’s also true for brain cancers. To make CAR T-cell therapy a viable option for those patients, scientists will have to figure out how to securely break down those walls.
In principle, June said, all forms of cancer can be targeted by immunotherapies. We just need to figure out how to get the treatments where they need to go—and how to keep cancer patients safe from their own immune systems.
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment, Popular Science
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is a brand fresh way treat cancer.
The FDA approved a fresh immunotherapy treatment for cancer. It’s approval marks the very first genetically-modified therapy to reach market.
Today, the Food and Drug Administration approved a brand fresh type of cancer treatment: One that employs the body’s immune system—a method known as immunotherapy—to fight cancer. This approval marks the very first use of gene editing to treat disease in the United States. For now, the therapy (primarily called CAR T-cell immunotherapy and now named Kymriah by Novartis), is approved to treat children and youthful adults (up to age 25) with a recurrent form of the the blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Despite its restricted use, this treatment marks a fresh era for cancer treatment. The therapy is unique and customized: Each patient’s own cells are re-engineered in a lab to fight cancer and sent back into their figures to go to work. With more research and clinical trials, which are presently ongoing, this personalized therapy has the potential to treat a broad diversity of blood and solid tumor cancers.
What is the therapy and how does it work?
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 figure, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.
CAR T-cell therapy was invented by a group of scientists, including Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania, about a half decade ago. It hit the public eye when doctors used it on a youthful lady named Emily Whitehead, a then six-year-old with a relapsed and aggressive form of ALL. The experimental treatment worked—Emily is now twelve and cancer-free—and sparked a number of clinical trials and partnerships with drug companies, including Novartis.
When CAR T-cell works, it indeed works. June told Popular Science during a two thousand sixteen interview that these drugs are so good at finding and attacking leukemia cells that he calls them "killer T-cells." He recalled one patient who didn’t see improvement until about one month after he received his engineered T-cells. Then, all of a unexpected, his condition improved drastically. When doctors traced which T-cells were involved, they found that every engineered CAR T-cell in his bod had descended from just one single transfused cell. "We infused one hundred million into him," said June, "and just one of them did all the strenuous lifting."
Why is it so different from other cancer treatments?
Traditional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation only target the cancer cells and tumors themselves. You need different types of drugs depending on the type of cancer, and once you stop providing a person the treatment, it quickly leaves the bod or stops working. This treatment, and all immunotherapies to a certain extent, target the person’s immune system and corset it to fight the cancer. In theory, it works just like a vaccine: once the immune system is coaxed into fighting the unhealthy cells, it should keep fighting them for a lifetime. That’s the idea, anyway—there’s still a lot of research to do.
Is it safe?
The therapy is not without its dangers. One of the thickest obstacles doctors and researchers face is treating the immune response that comes with the treatment. When you catch the flu or another type of infection, the fevers, aches, and agonies that you get are not from the invading bacteria or virus itself, but from your immune system revving up and fighting against it. The same thing happens with this treatment (and to a varying degree with other immunotherapies, too).
When a person receives engineered T-cells, the jolt to their immune system causes utterly high fevers and increases in proteins involved in inflammation. This can be very dangerous. But if the immune system doesn’t generate this massive response, that means the treatment isn’t working. So doctors are working now to figure out a way to deal with and control these side effects without compromising the effectiveness of the treatment.
Can it help all cancer patients?
Right now, the drug is approved only for ALL at a puny number of cancer centers across the country, and under very specific conditions: For people aged three to twenty five with relapsed ALL that has not responded to conventional therapy. Since leukemia is a cancer of the blood, it’s relatively effortless for engineered T-cells delivered via blood infusion to find, invade, and kill the diseased cells. That’s why doctors have been focusing on that cancer, as well as other types of leukemias, before attempting to shove the treatment forward for cancers in other parts of the bod.
Figuring out how to use the treatment on other types of cancer, including ones outside the blood that create solid tumors, is the next big hurdle for scientists to clear. The problem, according to June, is that in cancers that create tumors, the bad cells are indeed good at keeping invaders out of the growing mass. In pancreatic cancer, for example, the cancer cells basically build a wall around the tumor, which poses a problem for T-cells attempting to get to it. That’s also true for brain cancers. To make CAR T-cell therapy a viable option for those patients, scientists will have to figure out how to securely break down those walls.
In principle, June said, all forms of cancer can be targeted by immunotherapies. We just need to figure out how to get the treatments where they need to go—and how to keep cancer patients safe from their own immune systems.
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment, Popular Science
The FDA just approved a game-changing cancer treatment
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is a brand fresh way treat cancer.
The FDA approved a fresh immunotherapy treatment for cancer. It’s approval marks the very first genetically-modified therapy to reach market.
Today, the Food and Drug Administration approved a brand fresh type of cancer treatment: One that employs the body’s immune system—a method known as immunotherapy—to fight cancer. This approval marks the very first use of gene editing to treat disease in the United States. For now, the therapy (originally called CAR T-cell immunotherapy and now named Kymriah by Novartis), is approved to treat children and youthfull adults (up to age 25) with a recurrent form of the the blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Despite its restricted use, this treatment marks a fresh era for cancer treatment. The therapy is unique and customized: Each patient’s own cells are re-engineered in a lab to fight cancer and sent back into their figures to go to work. With more research and clinical trials, which are presently ongoing, this personalized therapy has the potential to treat a broad multitude of blood and solid tumor cancers.
What is the therapy and how does it work?
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 bod, these receptors help them find and kill cancer cells.
CAR T-cell therapy was invented by a group of scientists, including Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania, about a half decade ago. It hit the public eye when doctors used it on a youthfull doll named Emily Whitehead, a then six-year-old with a relapsed and aggressive form of ALL. The experimental treatment worked—Emily is now twelve and cancer-free—and sparked a number of clinical trials and partnerships with drug companies, including Novartis.
When CAR T-cell works, it truly works. June told Popular Science during a two thousand sixteen interview that these drugs are so good at finding and attacking leukemia cells that he calls them "killer T-cells." He recalled one patient who didn’t see improvement until about one month after he received his engineered T-cells. Then, all of a unexpected, his condition improved drastically. When doctors traced which T-cells were involved, they found that every engineered CAR T-cell in his assets had descended from just one single transfused cell. "We infused one hundred million into him," said June, "and just one of them did all the powerful lifting."
Why is it so different from other cancer treatments?
Traditional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation only target the cancer cells and tumors themselves. You need different types of drugs depending on the type of cancer, and once you stop providing a person the treatment, it quickly leaves the figure or stops working. This treatment, and all immunotherapies to a certain extent, target the person’s immune system and corset it to fight the cancer. In theory, it works just like a vaccine: once the immune system is coaxed into fighting the unhealthy cells, it should keep fighting them for a lifetime. That’s the idea, anyway—there’s still a lot of research to do.
Is it safe?
The therapy is not without its dangers. One of the thickest obstacles doctors and researchers face is treating the immune response that comes with the treatment. When you catch the flu or another type of infection, the fevers, aches, and agonies that you get are not from the invading bacteria or virus itself, but from your immune system revving up and fighting against it. The same thing happens with this treatment (and to a varying degree with other immunotherapies, too).
When a person receives engineered T-cells, the jolt to their immune system causes enormously high fevers and increases in proteins involved in inflammation. This can be very dangerous. But if the immune system doesn’t generate this massive response, that means the treatment isn’t working. So doctors are working now to figure out a way to deal with and control these side effects without compromising the effectiveness of the treatment.
Can it help all cancer patients?
Right now, the drug is approved only for ALL at a puny number of cancer centers across the country, and under very specific conditions: For people aged three to twenty five with relapsed ALL that has not responded to conventional therapy. Since leukemia is a cancer of the blood, it’s relatively effortless for engineered T-cells delivered via blood infusion to find, invade, and kill the diseased cells. That’s why doctors have been focusing on that cancer, as well as other types of leukemias, before attempting to shove the treatment forward for cancers in other parts of the bod.
Figuring out how to use the treatment on other types of cancer, including ones outside the blood that create solid tumors, is the next big hurdle for scientists to clear. The problem, according to June, is that in cancers that create tumors, the bad cells are truly good at keeping invaders out of the growing mass. In pancreatic cancer, for example, the cancer cells basically build a wall around the tumor, which poses a problem for T-cells attempting to get to it. That’s also true for brain cancers. To make CAR T-cell therapy a viable option for those patients, scientists will have to figure out how to securely break down those walls.
In principle, June said, all forms of cancer can be targeted by immunotherapies. We just need to figure out how to get the treatments where they need to go—and how to keep cancer patients safe from their own immune systems.
