StemCell Therapy

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ST. LOUIS - Specialists at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital have new hope for some cancer patients, through therapy using the bodys own immune system to fight the disease.

Its another addition to therapy options for cancer patients at SLU Hospital, home to the only outpatient bone marrow transplant program in the region, offering some patients the ability to go home each evening rather than face a lengthy hospital stay.

Dr. Mark Fesler is a SLUCare oncologist at SSM Health St. Louis University Hospital which is home to the only outpatient bone marrow transplant program in the region.

Called CAR T-cell therapy, a patients white blood cells the t lymphocyte aregenetically modifiedto attack and destroy cancer cells.

This is quite likely to change the landscape for treatment of blood cancers, says Mark Fesler, MD, director of the Center for Outpatient Blood and Marrow Transplantation at SLU Hospital and a SLUCare physician.

CAR T-cell therapy is FDA approved for some forms of aggressive, refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma and for patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia up to age 25.

In CAR t-cell therapy, T cells are taken from a patients blood, genetically modified and a special receptor called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) are placed on the patients cancer cells. Large quantities of the CAR T-cells are grown in the laboratory and given to the patient through infusion.

While long-term data on success is still being collected, in clinical trialsmore than 80 percent of CAR -T cell therapy patients experienced either a complete (no signs of cancer) or partial (some reduction in the extent of the cancer) response.

This therapy has been in development since the late 1980s and various refinements have come about to improve the efficacy of this treatment, says Dr. Fesler. We are excited to offer this to our patients.

CAR T-cell therapy isnot the right treatment for every patient. Your doctor will consider the type of cancer, past treatments and your overall health before recommending CAR T-cell therapy.

CAR T-cell therapy is only approved to treat two groups of people with certain types of cancer:

Children and young adults up to age 25 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that hasnt improved with or has returned after treatment

Adults with aggressive large B-cell lymphoma that hasnt improved with or has returned after treatment.

To learn more about CAR T-cell therapy, click herehttps://www.ssmhealth.com/conditions-treatments/cancer-care-support/treatment-procedures/car-t-cell-treatment

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SSM Health SLU Hospital offers CAR T-Cell therapy, using the bodys immune system to fight cancer - fox2now.com

This entry was posted on March 11, 2020 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Immune System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |