According to the American Cancer Society, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is being further researched to discover how many types of cancer that this treatment can help to cure. CAR T cell therapy is a treatment in which a patient’s T cells would be extracted, followed by the addition of synthetic chimeric antigen receptors. The addition of these man-made receptors would allow the patient’s T cells to be better equipped to identify and bind cancerous antigens. Currently only certain lymphomas and leukemias have been approved to be treated with CAR T cell therapy, and the American Cancer Society says that further research is being done because certain cancers don’t display antigens on their surface, thus the CAR T cell would need a “special armor” to be able to identify the antigenic proteins within these other cancerous cells. I believe this research will be well worth the time and money invested as it could potentially save millions of lives and dollars, as the treatment currently costs between $450,000 and $1,000,000+. The side effects of CAR T cell therapy include neurotoxicity, destruction of host B cells, and possibly even cytokine release syndrome characterized by a flood of cytokines that causes a high fever and low blood pressure.
In addition to curing cancers, The New York Times writes that CAR T cell therapy could be used to treat heart failure. In this case, the CAR T cells would function by receiving receptors that bind to fibroblast activation protein on fibrosis of scar tissue. The concerns of treating heart disease with CAR T cell therapy are similar to the concerns of treating cancer with it — high fever and low blood pressure that is potentially fatal — and some scientists are even concerned with any treatment that attacks the host’s fibroblasts, so ensuring that this treatment only effects scar tissue is crucial. Currently, only testing on mice has been done, but the results were promising as the scar tissue appeared to disappear with the treatment.
I am curious to see what other diseases or injuries CAR T cell therapy could treat. For example, arthritis patients also suffer from fibrosis and it causes lack of mobility and stiffness in the joints. If the CAR T cell therapy could be specified to target the scar tissue in joints or on muscles, could we see a cure for arthritis? It would also be beneficial to continue the research of this therapy, as it will likely become a more affordable option for patients once we better understand how to perform this technique. In all, I believe that this treatment shows great promise for treating many diseases in the future.
Christian Brewster Microbiology 