Researchers have been describing their excitement at preliminary clinical trial results that show a promising curative potential using immune therapies to treat a variety of blood cancers, leading some experts to call the so called CAR-T treatments ‘revolutionary’. The scientists remove some of our body’s immune cells, or T-Cells before re-engineering them to kill cancer cells, before infusing them back into the patient. In a small group of patients with late-stage acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), given just months to live, the CAR -T cells eliminated symptoms in 94% of the participants. Commenting on the results Juno Therapeutics of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said "This is unprecedented in medicine, to be honest, to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients, Although there is much excitement surrounding the T-Cell therapy space, it is important to remember these results are preliminary, unpublished and may not represent the ultimate performance of the drug. Blood cancers are typically the first to be tested with new therapies, as they are typically more accessible than solid tumours. It is frequently, though not always, difficult to translate results seen in blood cancers to solid tumour cancers as the latter’s microenvironment has the potential to “get in the way” of the drugs. Publicly-traded companies at the forefront of CAR-T cell therapy include: Novartis , Kite Pharma , Stanley Riddell and Kite Pharma . Novartis' CTL019 therapy is expected to be the first to market, seeking FDA approval next year for use in children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).One issue facing the proliferation of CAR -T The autologous CAR-T approach that relies on patient cells is simple and broadly understood. therapies is their complex, time-consuming and expensive manufacturing process, which requires two weeks per patient, and is difficult to run in parallel. Pricing of CAR-T therapies is also a difficult equation, with initial cost-per-patient expected to be in the region of $ 250,000 to $ 250,000 . Standard CAR -T therapies require the donation of T-cells from the target patient, before they are modified and then re-infused into the same patient. There are, however early stage therapies that use gene editing technology to alter the T-cells in a manner that allows them to be donated from other donors, foremost of which is CAR ’ UCART19 technology.
Researchers have been describing their excitement at preliminary clinical trial results that show a promising curative potential using immune therapies to treat a variety of blood cancers, leading some experts to call the so called CAR-T treatments ‘revolutionary’.The scientists remove some of our body’s immune cells, or T-Cells before re-engineering them to kill cancer cells, before infusing them back into the patient. In a small group of patients with late-stage acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), given just months to live, the CAR -T cells eliminated symptoms in 94% of the participants. Commenting on the results Juno Therapeutics of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said "This is unprecedented in medicine, to be honest, to get response rates in this range in these very advanced patients, Although there is much excitement surrounding the T-Cell therapy space, it is important to remember these results are preliminary, unpublished and may not represent the ultimate performance of the drug. Blood cancers are typically the first to be tested with new therapies, as they are typically more accessible than solid tumours. It is frequently, though not always, difficult to translate results seen in blood cancers to solid tumour cancers as the latter’s microenvironment has the potential to “get in the way” of the drugs. Publicly-traded companies at the forefront of CAR-T cell therapy include: Novartis , Kite Pharma , Stanley Riddell and Kite Pharma . Novartis' CTL019 therapy is expected to be the first to market, seeking FDA approval next year for use in children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).One issue facing the proliferation of CAR -T therapies is their complex, time-consuming and expensive manufacturing process, which requires two weeks per patient, and is difficult to run in parallel. Pricing of CAR-T therapies is also a difficult equation, with initial cost-per-patient expected to be in the region of $ 250,000 to $ 250,000 . Standard CAR -T therapies require the donation of T-cells from the target patient, before they are modified and then re-infused into the same patient. There are, however early stage therapies that use gene editing technology to alter the T-cells in a manner that allows them to be donated from other donors, foremost of which is CAR ’ UCART19 technology.