Nowadays it seems as though cancer is something that impacts our society in an immense way. The national cancer institute reports that in the past year, “an estimated 1,685,210 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the united states.” However, the FDA has just given the thumbs up to a new treatment that is supposed to alter patient cells, leading their body to fight cancer, but most specific non-Hodgkin lymphoma. CAR T-cell therapy is a new innovation meant for patients who have been unsuccessful with chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants. The treatment works by extracting T cells from a patient’s body, sending them to a special lab and genetically modifying them to target the cancer causing protein that can be found in patient cells. About 72 percent of patients have responded to the therapy in which 51 percent of those people have showed no evidence of remaining cancer, which is a very positive outcome considering the fact that these patients being treated had no other options to treat their condition. This new treatment does come with potential side effect known as “cytokine release syndrome” and I know we don’t all speak in medical terms so to make it in simpler, patients will experience high fevers and low blood pressure. Because of this, the FDA has decided to label this product with a warning. Hopefully this new treatment will be the first step out of many to find a cure.
sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/10/19/cutting…
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics