CAR T Cell Therapy: New Weapon in The War Against Cancer

What is CAR T Cell Therapy?

In the ongoing fight against cancers resistant to conventional treatment options, scientists have landed upon a promising new weapon known as Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapy, or CAR T Cell Therapy in short.

Using the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer, the treatment relies on a type of white blood cell called a T cell, which plays a key role in helping the human immune system fight off threats by diseases and other harmful pathogens.

CRISPR’s Contribution to CAR T Cell Therapy

While unedited T cells oftentimes fail to recognize cancer cells, new gene-editing breakthroughs such as CRISPR can genetically reprogram T cells to attack cancerous cells with much higher efficacy than older, more harmful treatment options such as chemotherapy.

How Does CAR T Cell Therapy Work?

To perform CAR T Cell Therapy, blood is drawn from a cancer patient, before T cells are isolated in a lab. The T cells then undergo genetic reprogramming, which allows CAR T cells to recognize specific antigen protein markers on the surface of certain cancer cells. The genetically-altered T cells are then multiplied and packaged for re-infusion into the donor patient, which in turn allows the altered T cells to patrol a patient’s bloodstream in search of blood-borne cancers such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma, multiple myeloma and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

First approved by the FDA in 2017, clinical studies of CAR T Cell Therapy have reported remission rates as high as 93% in severe forms of blood cancer, which is particularly impressive considering most CAR T cell clinical trials have been built around patients who failed to respond to many if not all other available treatment options.

While existing CAR T Cell Therapy takes nine to fourteen days to produce genetically-altered T cells—a life-threatening setback for patients with aggressive forms of cancer—in a pre-clinical study published in early 2022, a team of researchers from Penn Medicine in Philadelphia reported on a new technique that generated functional CAR T cells with enhanced anti-tumor potency in just 24 hours, making CAR T Cell Therapy a giant leap forward in man’s persistent war against disease.