Cellular immunotherapies, these treatments with immense potential, are based on an ultra -esimpulous principle. They consist in reprogramming certain immune cells of the patient, by rearming them so that they destroy harmful cells, involved in cancers or autoimmune diseases, for example.
One of these strategies, successfully used in blood cancers, is based on “Car-T cells”. Here, T lymphocytes, a category of white blood cells, are taken from the blood of each patient. Then they are delivered in vitro a genetic instruction, which intimate their order to produce a surface protein: the bus, or chimerical receiver of the antigen. It is, in clear, an artificial receiver designed to bind to a protein (an “antigen”) carried by the tumor cells of the patient. For example, at the CD19 protein, presents excess on B lymphocytes in certain lymphomas or leukemia.
Once reinjected to the patient, these CAR-T cells behave in missiles with a researcher head. Thanks to their famous because, they are specifically binding to the antigen present on tumor cells, which they eliminate. Another advantage: because they are living cells, they proliferate in the patient’s body, where they operate “As long as cancer remains to destroy”explained to Mondein 2024, Michel Sadelain, pioneer of this approach to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in New York. To date, seven CAR-T cell therapies have been approved in the United States and Europe against certain lymphomas, myelomas or leukemia. The strategy is also the subject of early clinical trials in solid tumors and autoimmune diseases.
You have 65.34% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
