CAR T CELL THERAPY

Abstract

The idea of rearranging one’s own immune system to recognize a tumor cell as something foreign and harmful is certainly more appealing than toxic and non selective chemotherapy. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is one of the new innovative treatment methods and represents revolution in personalized oncology. Encouraging results from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the treatment of hematologic malignancies have led to worldwide interest in creating more effective generation of CARs. This cell therapy is currently registered with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah®, Novartis) for young patients aged up to 25 with refractory / relapsing B lymphoblastic acute leukemia (r/r pB ALL) and adults patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (r/r DLBCL). Similar drug axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta®, Gilead) has been approved by EMA for treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (r/r DLBCL) as well as primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL). Several hundred clinical studies about CAR T-cell therapy are currently ongoing, including those for solid tumors and most of them are in China.