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.