Adoptive T cell transfer can enhance the natural cancer-fighting ability of your body’s T cells
How does it work?
Adoptive T cell transfer is an anti-cancer approach that enhances the natural cancer-fighting ability of the body’s T cells by removing immune system cells, growing and/or making changes to them outside of the body, and then re-infusing them back into the patient.
There are 3 different approaches to adoptive T cell transfer:
- T cells can be collected from a sample of a patient’s tumor and multiplied in a laboratory
- T cells can be taken out of the body and genetically modified to attack antigens on cancer cells
- T cells can be taken out of the body and equipped with special receptors called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs); when given back to the patient, these “CAR T cells” recognize and attack cancer cells
For which cancers is it currently being used or studied?
- Two CAR T cell therapies have received FDA approval—tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah®), for the treatment of certain types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta®), for certain types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
- In clinical trials, adoptive T cell transfer has shown promise in the treatment of metastatic melanoma, lymphoma, leukemia, neuroblastoma, and synovial cell sarcoma; it is also currently being tested for use in other solid tumors and blood cancers