Oklahoma doctors revealed that there is a new treatment for cancer patients on Wednesday, 12th June 2019. They call it the revolutionary new treatment that will use the body’s immune cells to fight tumours. This treatment is set to go on sale starting from Thursday at the Stephenson Cancer Center at OU Medicine.

 

This revolutionary new treatment is called CAR T, a way of ‘rebooting’ the immune system when it fails. CAR T stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy.

 

The T-cell therapy with CAR has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Officials revealed that its initial use was for two different blood cancers, one affecting children and the other adults.

 

“CAR T is a major breakthrough for patients who have not improved with standard treatments,” said Dr. George Selby, director of the Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program at the Stephenson Cancer Center.

 

“It is an immune therapy in which we’re harnessing our own cells to recognise cancer cells. That’s what a normal immune system does – it acts in a surveillance capacity so that when a malignant cell arises, it is killed by our immune system. CAR T is a way of ‘rebooting’ the immune system when it has failed.”

 

It was initially used to treat advanced lymphomas in adults. However, physicians expect to offer the same treatment for acute lymphoblastic lymphoma in children and young adults. Although, for both cases, the patients must have failed to respond to standard chemotherapy or stem cell transplantation.

 

How the CAR T cancer treatment works

 

The patients being treated would first have their blood collected at the Oklahoma Blood Institute. This is similar to a regular blood donation, and then the T cell (a type of white blood cell involved in immunity) will be filtered out. Then the plasma and red blood cells are returned to the patient.

 

According to hospital officials, the T cells are then sent to a company that injects them with the gene for a chimeric antigen receptor known to bind itself to cancer cells and activate the T cell. This would allow the newly developed T cells to find and attack all cancer cells efficiently.

 

Once the CAR T cells are generated, they are shipped back to the Stephenson Cancer Center. They would then be administered to the patient through an IV similar to a blood transfusion.

 

“Until the advent of CAR T, if a patient’s tumour came back after a stem cell transplant, their options were very limited, if they existed at all,” Selby said. “This is a major breakthrough for those patients for whom standard treatment has not been successful.”

 

CAR T is a one-time treatment which is very different from other kinds of cancer treatment. In this case, the T cells remain in the body and, if the cancer returns, the cells reactivate to attack the tumours.

 

“These T cells go on to kill hundreds to thousands of tumour cells; the nickname for these cells is ‘serial killers,’” said Dr Adam Asch, deputy director of the Stephenson Cancer Center and chief of the Division of Medical Oncology and Hematology.

 

“The research data that led to the approval of CAR T has been extraordinary,” Oncologists Asch said.