Nine in ten patients responded: a cell therapy is holding its ground against stubborn lymphomas

At Ghent University Hospital in Belgium, doctors looked back at 83 people whose lymphoma — a cancer of the immune system — had come back or stopped responding to standard treatment. Each had received CAR T-cell therapy, a treatment that takes a patient's own immune cells, teaches them in a laboratory to hunt the cancer, and returns them to the body. Nine in ten patients responded, and in more than two-thirds the cancer disappeared completely on scans. The typical time before the disease progressed again was nearly 16 months, and typical survival reached about 30 months. The results, published in Acta Clinica Belgica, carried a practical lesson too: patients whose cancer had already shrunk during the short bridging treatment given while their cells were being prepared fared best of all, with two-year survival of 72.6%, against 31.1% for those whose disease had not responded.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation