Perhaps you were diagnosed with cancer and went through traditional treatment—surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, a bone marrow transplant, or a combination of therapies. While the results were promising at first, your cancer may have come back. Or maybe the treatment didn’t work at all.
For people with certain types of blood cancers facing this situation, CAR T-cell immunotherapy treatment is offering new hope. Let’s take a look at this advanced cancer treatment, now available at the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute.
Immunotherapy: Changing the Way Cancer is Treated
Immunotherapy. It’s a new word based on what sounds like a straight-forward concept. Immunotherapy uses a person’s own immune system cells to attack their own cancer cells. Doctors have used this therapy since the early 2010s to shrink and even eradicate tumors in some people with advanced cancers. CAR T is the latest therapy in the immunotherapy arsenal. Here’s how it works:
- Blood is collected from a patient with cancer.
- T cells (a type of white blood cell that fights infection) are extracted from the blood and taken to a lab.
- T cells are re-programmed to develop new chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that recognize and fight cancer cells in a way they could not previously accomplish.
- The genetically altered T cells are infused back into the patient’s body through an IV. The treatment involves a single infusion and may require approximately two weeks of hospital care.
Who Can Get CAR T-Cell Therapy?
Currently, CAR T is approved for patients with aggressive lymphoma that has not responded to one or more therapies. Clinical trials are constantly testing new treatment options and eligibility. If you have questions about whether you or a loved one could get this treatment, consider asking your hematologist oncologist (a doctor who specializes in treating cancers of the blood). Doctors will help you understand how to best treat your disease and if CAR T may be an option.
New clinical trials are underway to test the effectiveness of CAR T for many other cancers that returned after a first-line chemotherapy treatment.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved CAR T-cell therapy for these blood cancers:
- Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the U.S.
- Mantle Cell and Follicular Lymphomas, two other non-Hodgkin lymphomas
- Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells
- Acute and Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
The Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute now provides CAR T-cell therapy in Lancaster for adult patients with DLBCL. For other adult diseases which can be treated with CAR T, and for experimental CAR T therapies, Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute patients are treated at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. Children in need of CART are treated at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
How Successful is CAR T-Cell Therapy?
CAR T now helps patients achieve complete remission after other treatments have failed. Remission means cancer is not detectable, yet does not guarantee cure, and some cancer may return later. Some patients treated more than 10 years ago, have had no recurrence. Success rates depend on which disease is treated. Overall, the National Institutes of Health reports that CAR T leads to long-term survival in less than half of patients treated.
Read about Bill Ludwig the first patient to receive CAR T treatment at Penn Medicine. Bill remained in remission for 11 years until his death from COVID-19 in January 2021.