A Child Treated with CAR-T Cancer Therapy Is Cancer-Free 18 Years Later

    Roughly eighteen years ago, a four year old girl was diagnosed with a rare nerve cell cancer and had received an infusion of immune cells that were genetically engineered to fight the disease. Since then she has been cancer free, therefore making her the longest surviving patient to have been treated with CAR-T cell therapy. This treatment includes the removal of some of the patients immune cells, and genetically modifying them to target and kill cancer cells before returning them to the body. This is a relatively new type of immunotherapy and is still in clinical stages, but solid tumors have been found to be harder to treat. This is because solid tumors have molecules that can hinder the modified cells, making it hard for the treatment to penetrate the cancer. Solid tumors account for ninety percent of all cancer diagnosed . 

    For part of a clinical study, nineteen children with neuroblastoma were recruited to take part in the CAR-T treatment. In a time period of seven years the children received CAR-T infusions, and unfortunately only seven of the children survived. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are now questioning why treatment worked for some and not others, so they are currently taking measures to investigate this. Since this study was done, scientists have modified the CAR-T cells even further to allow them to last longer and locate tumors quicker. The clinical trials on these new CART-T cells are still being ran, but researchers are hopeful that this new modification will result in a higher survival rate.