In the past, cancer treatment has consisted of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. However, over the past ten years, immunotherapy has become a popular method of treatment. According to the National Cancer Institute, immunotherapy is a therapy that utilizes the strength of a patient’s own immune system to attack the cancer tumors. Immunotherapy typically takes the form of drugs that have proven their ability to decrease the size of tumors, and even eradicate some. An example of an immunotherapy drug class is immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Another form of immunotherapy is called CAR T-cell therapy. In CAR T-cell therapy, T cells are taken from the patient’s blood and altered in a lab. Scientists are able to add a gene that causes T cells to have the receptor which binds to the cancer cell antigen. These receptors are called chimeric antigen receptors, or CAR. Each receptor is made specifically for the type of cancer that the patient has. So far, CAR T-cell therapy is being used to treat the blood cancer, leukemia, which has the antigen CD19.
There are currently six CAR T-cell therapies that are FDA approved to treat leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. In this Nature article, scientists examine the long-lasting effects of CAR T-cell therapy by studying two patients that received the treatment in 2010. Upon examination, scientists noticed even 10 years after receiving treatment, there is a detectable presence of CAR T-cells in the patients’ blood. Additionally, there is an absence of leukemia cells in both patients indicating the long-lasting impact of this treatment. The presence of the CAR T-cells was determined using PCR and flow cytometry. These results show the promising future for immunotherapy as a treatment option for cancer.