Posted on 06/22/2019 8:40:15 AM PDT by BenLurkin
What is CAR-T?
It's a highly personalised drug that's made for each patient using their body's own cells.
White blood cells called T-cells are removed from the patient's blood before being frozen in liquid nitrogen and sent away to labs in the USA.
There, they're genetically reprogrammed so that rather than killing bacteria and viruses, they now seek out and kill cancer.
Then they're shipped back to the UK to be infused into the patient's bloodstream where they'll hopefully continue to grow and work inside the patient.
The whole process takes a month.
Because it's very new, there's not enough data to say for sure how effective the new therapy is but clinical trials have shown incredible results.
40 per cent of patients had all signs of their terminal lymphomas removed from their body just 15 months after treatment.
CAR-T cells target proteins that stick out from the surface of cancerous cells.
Cancerous cells have a kind of protein attached to them - but so do healthy cells.
So CAR-T therapy currently targets these proteins, whether they're healthy or not.
That's OK if it's a blood cancer you're dealing with but if you've got lung cancer, for example, you can't kill off bits of the lung without killing/seriously impacting the health of the patient.
(Excerpt) Read more at thesun.co.uk ...
Probably can’t because there are hurdles to get it past the government FDA
Twit? Nice. Doesnt shock me. You arent the most intelligent one here thats for sure.
Novartis also has Kymriah approved and on market. Pioneered in coordination with the UPenn Perelman Center. This will be the future of cancer treatment...very exciting stuff.
you had the treatment in this article? If so- did it kick the cancer to the curb hopefully? How l ong before your white blood cells begin fighting bacteria and viruses again>?? Did they give you an estimate?
I’m sorry if I gave that impression. No, I didn’t have CAR-T. I had rituxan only. Rituxan is a monoclonal antibody which targets a specific protein. IIRC, Rituxan is but one of the drugs used in CAR-T.
It was so weird, to my way of thinking. I was diagnosed in late May, about now, one year ago. I started the rituxan treatment in June. I had four in total spaced one week apart. On July 11, the doc said he could not see any more lymphoma in my blood. I am back to the “watch and wait” (I call it “whine and worry”) stage of lymphoma.
About white cells back at work, I think it was 6 - 9 months for that to happen. I had some blood work done last month (kidney infection) which showed normal lymphs. Although my idea of avoiding people isn’t a bad one. I didn’t get sick during the winter. I ALSO didn’t get the flu shot. I also want to clarify, mine is a small B-cell lymphoma. This particular treatment is for T-cell lymphomas.
[[I call it whine and worry) stage ]]
Lol- i hear ya- Cancer is awful even after it’s ‘been cured’ - there’s still the worry it could come back- let’s pray it doesn’t- They are making such tremendous progress with cancers- and now i see they are very close to a cure for Alzheimer’s too- hopefully one day these terrible diseases will be a minor worry only-
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