New adoptive T cell therapies — in which T cells, the immune system’s natural hunters patrolling the body for foreign adversaries, are retrieved from cancer-riddled patients, super-charged and amplified outside the body, and then infused back into the same patient — are changing the prospects of cancer patients. Since 2017, when CAR (chimeric antigen receptor)-T cells were green-lighted as the first modified therapeutic cells by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to treat leukemia, five similar products have since been approved and more than 20,000 people have been treated with this game-changing immunotherapy.
