Addressing Pros and Cons of CAR-T Cell Therapy in Melanoma

For patients with melanoma, treatment with CAR-T cell therapy may come along with pros and cons to consider.

T-cells are immune cells that recognize and destroy foreign invaders in our bodies. CAR-T cell therapy harnesses this power by removing the body's germ-fighting T cells, engineering them to attack cancer cells, and then infusing them back into the body, as explained by an expert in an interview with CURE®.

CURE® interviewed Dr. Anusha Kalbasi, an associate professor of Radiation Oncology at the Stanford School of Medicine, to gain insights into the usefulness and drawbacks of CAR-T cell therapy.

Transcript:

Some patients have an immune system that naturally is ready to attack the cancer, and some drugs or some other treatments may work, like TIL therapy, may work for those patients. But in patients [whose] body's own immune system isn't finding and killing the cancer, we need to come up with an alternative strategy, and CAR-T cell provides an alternative for those patients. So that's one advantage.

The other thing is CAR-T cells can potentially come in with one treatment and clear tumors and then survive in the body as kind of like security guards. So, the idea that this is a living drug that is, it's not just a drug that you give, and it gets excreted out through the kidney, but it's a drug that stays in your body forever and continues to fight on your behalf.

That's one of the benefits. But there are downsides.

You're injecting large numbers of T-cells into the body. You're genetically modifying the T-cells, so there are some risks potentially associated with that, although those risks are very low, if any, and then when the cells expand to try to fight the cancer, there's a lot of inflammation that happens potentially that can cause side effects, that can be detrimental to the patients.

But we've learned a lot from our experiences in blood cancers and how to manage these side effects. And so, we think we can make CAR-T cells safe and effective.

This transcript was edited for clarity and conciseness.

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