CAR-T cell therapy

Treating Solid Tumors: Combining CAR-T Cell Therapy with Probiotics

Posted on by Johanna Lee

Chimeric Antigen Recepter (CAR)-T cell therapy is a personalized immunotherapy that harnesses the patient’s own immune system to combat cancer. It is done by engineering the patient’s T cells to specifically target and attack cancer cells in their body, and it has shown great success in treating various blood cancers such as leukemia.

Treating solid tumors with CAR-T cells, however, has proved much more challenging. This is mainly because solid tumors contain a heterogeneous population of cells, expressing a variety of antigens—many of which are also expressed in healthy cells. Therefore, T cells targeting solid tumors could potentially attack healthy tissue, resulting in serious side effects. In addition, solid tumors create a hostile microenvironment that is difficult for CAR-T cells to infiltrate.

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Supporting CAR-T Cell Therapy with STR Analysis

Posted on by Riley Bell

Engineered T-cell therapies, specifically CAR-T cell therapies, have emerged as a breakthrough treatment for several blood cancers including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), mantle cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and multiple myeloma (1). CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy involves collecting T cells from a patient and re-engineering them to detect and destroy cancer cells.

While these therapies have improved progression-free and overall survival in many cases, their complex manufacturing workflows and rapid expansion into new cancer types have introduced a demand for quality control, identity testing and process traceability (1).

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