T-Cell Therapy

Today, there is a new treatment being used called T-Cell therapy. This treatment involves modifying a person’s T-cells so that they can better fight off an infection. One disease where this option is being explored is cancer. For cancer, it is called CAR T-Cell therapy and involves inserting a protein called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) into a patients T-cells. This method is still being tested but it is believed that it will provide an effective and safe option for helping treat cancer.

The CAR proteins are very good at finding cancer cells, so they help the T-cells better identify cancerous cells. Through the trials conducted so far, CAR T-cell therapy has shown promise in all age groups who may be losing the effectiveness of their other current treatment. This shows that while other treatments may be losing effectiveness, a promising replacement may be on its way in. Despite these promises, there have been multiple side effects associated with this treatment. The first is the side effect on your wallet. This treatment is very expensive, anywhere from $350,000 to $1.5 million. Other side effects have included problems with speech, delirium, seizures, and other neurological side effects. However, there has been an additional design of the original treatment that is safer. When this alternative was tested, a more than 50% decrease in side effects was recorded with far fewer severe side effects as well.

I believe that this treatment is very promising and could be an effective method of treatment in the future. Given that it is a one-time treatment as opposed to recurring operations such as chemotherapy, it is very appealing to someone who does not want to deal with multiple administrations of the treatment. Also, with the reduced side effects in the new version there is less risk with this treatment than before. I personally am a fan of this treatment because it is stimulating the immune system you already have as opposed to bypassing your immune system to kill the cancer in another way, such as drugs. I believe that with some more testing, this treatment could become widely available and one of the more common methods of treatment.