Although rare, it is not unheard-of for new treatments to achieve substantial early successes in one or two patients only to experience significant, sobering setbacks in larger-scale trials. This often at the very least dampens the media hype, but CAR T-cells have made consistent progress in garnering both considerable investments from pharmaceutical companies and strong results from clinical trials. Further promising results for the therapy were reported at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) conference this week for a host of blood cancers, including practically incurable multiple myeloma.
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“It’s an exciting time. Based on these results and recent FDA approvals in this field, there is reason to be confident that cell therapies, such as CAR T, may one day be the standard of care for hematologic malignancies as well as solid tumors,” said Reiner J. Brentjens, MD, Director of cellular therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre at the ASH meeting.
For tumors with currently dismal outcomes with conventional chemotherapy, this hopeful prediction can’t come true soon enough, and with almost 100 CAR T-cell clinical trials currently ongoing in the U.S. alone, including for pancreatic and brain cancers, options for patients with hard-to-treat cancers are increasing.
Read full, original post: Chemotherapy-Free Cancer Treatments Move Closer To Reality
