For CAR-T Cell Therapy

Immunotherapy is the treatment of a disease, like cancer, by activating or suppressing the patient’s immune system, thereby identifying and destroying cancer cells. Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (or CAR-T therapy) is the latest development in this field with tremendous potential to revolutionize cancer therapy.

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T cells) are specialized T-cells that have been genetically engineered to produce an artificial T-cell receptor designed for use as an immunotherapeutic agent. This allows the CAR-T cell to target and selectively kill cancer cells when administered to a patient. T-cells are harvested from a patient (autologous) or taken from a healthy donor (allogeneic) and genetically altered by the introduction of a retro- or lentiviral construct expressing a specific T-cell receptor which programs the modified T- cells to identify and target an antigen present exclusively on the surface of tumour cells. In the weeks following the introduction of the chimeric T-cell into the patient, it behaves as a normal T-cell but with the ability to recognize and eliminate cancer cells, which the patient’s unaltered T-cell was unable to do.

CAR T-cells have been the focus of multiple clinical trials recently, with promising results that demonstrate their efficacy and specificity, leading to less harmful side effects when compared to radio- or chemotherapy. CAR-T cells also have the advantage of being retained in the patient to develop into long-lived memory T-cells. This can prevent the recurrence of the same cancer in the patient, if there is a relapse, the memory CAR T-cells are reactivated immediately to eliminate the new cancer cells swiftly. As CAR-T therapy is completely different from existing cancer therapies, the monitoring and assessment of its effects also require novel methodology. CAR-T cells require characterization or ‘immunophenotyping’ by Flow Cytometry, cell-based assays, and qPCR/RT-PCR. Another parameter that requires careful monitoring during CAR-T therapy is patient health. This usually involves the measurement of cytokines and antibodies produced by the patient’s immune system in response to the treatment, by ELISA, MSD, Luminex, cell-based proliferation assays, etc., both during treatment and in the months and years following the treatment.