Scientific research in the field of blood cancers is advancing in great strides: increasingly targeted therapies, treatments without chemotherapy, oral drugs and combinations of drugs increasingly effective and better tolerated, bi-specific antibodies and Car-T immunotherapy, last frontier for the treatment of liquid tumors after the giant steps in the treatment of lung neoplasia.
Immunotherapy
This is the case of “precision” immunotherapy, a new weapon that is already avoiding chemotherapy in 4 out of 10 patients with lung cancer, with more than encouraging results. Precision immunotherapy involves the use of innovative drugs aimed at awakening the immune system against cancer, based on the characteristics of the individual tumor. This means being able to create a personalized and tailored therapy for everyone.
The “drug of life”
Now the turning point concerns in particular the so-called liquid tumors (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma). Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say they have successfully treated chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of blood cancer, thanks to the experimental technique Car-T (T-cell therapy of the chimeric antigen receptor). David Porter, one of the two doctors interviewed by NBC, called it “the drug of life”.
The principle of this type of therapy is to combat cancer’s ability to prevent the cells of our immune system from identifying it as a threat and destroying it.
How the Car-T works
The Humanitas hospital in Milan explains a The messenger that “CAR-T’s require a complex preparation that begins with the removal of cells from the patient’s blood which are then separated from the rest of the blood cells and plasma through a technique called apheresis, which allows for the collection of the patient’s lymphocytes. lymphocytes are then sent to the laboratories responsible for the engineering process, according to a strict quality control protocol “.
“Once in the laboratory, it is introduced into the lymphocytes the CAR receptor (Chimeric Antigen Receptor) capable of recognizing tumor cells: the CAR-T thus obtained express on its surface the receptor that detects the CD 19 antigen, a protein characteristic of lymphoma cells – the document explains again -. The procedure lasts about 3-4 weeks, after which the CAR-T lymphocytes can be infused into the patient’s blood, in order to attack and destroy cancer cells “.