Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine may be the new wave of the future so to say. This type of medicine focuses on using a person’s own T cells to kill unwanted cells. A T cell is a type of white blood cell that is found in the blood. They are a part of the adaptive immune system and function to kill off cells that have been infected throughout the body. This type of treatment can be used to treat CANCER. Yes, CANCER. Cancer cells can be hard for the body’s immune system to kill because they aren’t always recognized by the immune system cells, more specifically T cells. The technology behind this treatment is vital in the progression towards a cure for cancer. If you ask me, that pretty cool.

So how does it work? Patients with large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma or advanced acute lymphoblastic leukemia are able to be treated with the CAR T cell therapy. These patients have their blood drawn, and the T cells are removed. Scientists then take the T cell and modify them by placing a new type of receptor on the cells. A T cell normally recognizes an invader in the body when its T cell receptor binds to a MHC molecule on on the outside of a dendritic cell. These dendritic cells have pieces of an invader displayed on their MHC molecule for the T cell to recognize. By adding these new receptors on the T cells, it allows them to be able to better recognize cancer cells, that could otherwise slip through the immune response.

This specific type of treatment has an 80% success rate in leukemia patients and 80% of the lymphoma patients have a full or partial response to the treatment. The therapy can also produce some side effects, such as some neurological events or overproduction of cytokines, but have proven to be diminished by drug treatment. Although the success rate of this treatment looks promising, the cost to receive the therapy is disheartening. It can cost around $373,000 to receive the treatment. The percentage of patients able to fork up the cost proves that this may not be the most realistic form of therapy. Another downfall with this type of therapy is that it is not used as the first line of treatment. It is only used when the first and second line plans fail to put a patient into remission. Although the treatment has its downfalls, I think the continuing research and trials could make a big difference when it comes to the future of cancer treatment worldwide.