UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
For more than half a century, the treatment of cancer has relied heavily on radiation, surgery, chemotherapy and, increasingly, the use of drugs that target specific mutations within the cancer genome. While these conventional approaches are effective in some patients, there is an urgent need to develop new therapies. Leading the charge are those that harness the immune system’s unique ability to identify and destroy tumor cells.”
One such immunotherapy is chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, which involves extracting a patient’s own T cells and equipping them with a receptor that targets the cancer cell. CAR T cells are expanded in large numbers in specialized production facilities and then infused back into the patient. There are more than 100 CAR T-cell clinical trials currently ...
