CAR T-cell Cancer therapy trial

Under the direction of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, Wilmot is one of 16 institutions in the United States selected to administer CAR T-cell therapy, a process in which a patient’s immune system is manipulated to attack cancer, not from the outside with traditional methods such as surgery, radiation or drugs, but from within.
Friedberg’s team will re-infuse into Foster his own immune cells, called T-cells, which were extracted three weeks ago and shipped to a laboratory in California where they were re-engineered into leaner, meaner, and smarter, cancer-killing machines.
They have been customized to target Foster’s specific cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, the most common form of non-Hodgkin’s disease, in which the body produces too many abnormal lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. While curable in two-thirds of the 15,000 patients diagnosed in the United States each year, for those who don’t respond to the first lines of chemotherapy treatment, survival is often measured in months.
Foster has entered the Wilmot Cancer Institute at the University of Rochester Medical Center where the doctor has become the patient in a immunotherapy clinical trial being overseen by Dr. Jonathan Friedberg of URMC's nationally recognized lymphoma program. Results in patients involved in other trials have been extremely encouraging, to the point where researchers believe CAR T-cell therapy could become the first course of treatment for lymphomas and other cancers, including lung and prostate. The challenge now is replicating the results on an expanded basis nationally.