The CAR T-Cell Race ...

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http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/42462/title/The-CAR-T-Cell-Race/

Moving forward We know someone who is currently undergoing this trial and wish him well!


"Tumor-targeting T-cell therapies are generating remarkable remissions in hard-to-beat cancers—and attracting millions of dollars of investment along the way."


"...While most of these studies are currently aimed at late-stage disease for which other therapeutic options have failed, researchers in the field anticipate that these immunotherapies could replace standard cancer treatments in the future. “While we are evaluating these therapies in advanced cancer now, we absolutely believe that they have the potential to become frontline therapies,” Sadelain says.

Long time coming

CAR T-cell therapy has had a lengthy run-up to what may appear to be overnight success. The first CAR T cells were developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in the late 1980s by chemist and immunologist Zelig Eshhar. In 1990, Eshhar took a year-long sabbatical to join Steven Rosenberg at the National Institutes of Health, where they prepared CARs that targeted human melanoma. “We designed CAR T cells to overcome a number of problems in getting T cells to attack cancer,” says Eshhar. These problems included a tumor’s ability to escape immune recognition by silencing the major histocompatibility complex molecules and the generally immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment..."