Leon Barretto

The immune system works by keeping track of all the substances normally found in your body. Any new substance the immune system doesn't recognize raises an alarm, causing the immune system to attack it. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a promising new way to get immune cells called T cells (a type of white blood cell) to fight cancer by changing them in the lab so they can find and destroy cancer cells. CAR T-cell therapies are sometimes talked about as a type of gene or cell therapy, or immune effect cell therapy.

The idea of turning the immune system against cancer has a long history. Nearly 130 years ago, an American surgeon called William Coley showed that deliberately injecting cancer patients with bacteria to stimulate their immune systems could cause their tumors to recede. However, the approach was gradually forgotten as others failed to replicate his results.

Groundbreaking scientific advancements have led to three CAR T approvals for ALL and DLBCL since 2017. Approved CAR T-cell therapies are focused on treating select relapsed or refractory liquid tumors that affect less than 5 percent of cancer patients today. In 2018, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) named CAR T cell immunotherapy as its ‘Advance of the Year’. Efforts are now underway to turn CAR T cells against multiple types of cancer, including blood cancers and solid tumors.
The pipeline of investigative CAR T-cell therapies has rapidly expanded to more than 500 trials underway in 2019. While the earliest studies on CAR T targeted CD19, clinical programs today span a wider range of targets and tumor types.

The last trial stage is also under way of a potential blockbuster product that extends survival for men with non-metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. The product has received regulatory approval in the US, the European Union (EU), Brazil, Canada and Japan. A Phase III study on hormone-sensitive prostate cancer is expected to start producing data soon.