• Contact Us

NHS Personalised Medicine Cancer Treatment Offers New Hope to Patients

on Thursday, 22 August 2019.

NHS patients have been offered a new cancer therapy called 'CAR-T' which uses a patient's own cells to fight cancer.

A truly personalised medicine, the CAR-T is designed as a 'living drug' by using T-cells taken from blood samples provided by the patient. These white blood cells are reprogrammed in a lab in the US to find and destroy cancer cells known as 'chimeric antigen receptor T-cells', also known as CAR-T cells.

Whilst the treatment has shown great potential, with some patients seeing terminal lymphoma eliminated from their body only 15 months after treatment, this is not the case for everyone. In addition, the side effects from the therapy are often severe, including short-term neurotoxicity, fever and sickness. As a result, data from use of the therapy is being closely studied to allow a full analysis of the treatment to take place despite some strong success stories.

The treatment is currently focused on blood cancers due to the ability to control the adverse consequences of using the CAR-T therapy, which unfortunately includes the destruction of healthy cells as well as cancerous ones. The adaption of the therapy to solid cancers is being investigated and we await the results of active clinical trials to see what is next for this form of pioneer personalised treatment.


What are your thoughts on the rise of personalised medicines? Share your thoughts with a member of our Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences team, or complete the form below.

 

Get in Touch

First name(*)
Please enter your first name.

Last name(*)
Invalid Input

Email address(*)
Please enter a valid email address

Telephone
Please insert your telephone number.

How would you like us to contact you?

Invalid Input

How can we help you?(*)
Please limit text to alphanumeric and the following special characters: £.%,'"?!£$%^&*()_-=+:;@#`

See our privacy page to find out how we use and protect your data.

Invalid Input