Researchers at Mass General Brigham, the nation's largest hospital research organization and the nation's leading health system for medical research, teaching and patient care, used a new approach to CAR-T therapy. Complex, personalized cancer treatment stimulates the immune system to attack cancer cells. The initial results were apparently groundbreaking.

Promising new cancer treatment: tumors regress rapidly

As explained by the German Cancer Society, general CAR T cell therapy is a cancer treatment that is currently used for certain blood or lymph node cancers, i.e. certain leukemias and lymphomas.

The novelty of the method used in the US is the addition of additional antibodies, as stated in the study published in the “New England Journal of Medicine”. The therapy was carried out for the first time in humans. Three participants were initially treated with recurrent glioblastoma, a recurrent brain tumor that recurs after treatment.

The first results already seem very promising. As a result, one patient's tumor shrank by 18.5 percent two days after treatment. By day 69, the tumor had shrunk by 60.7 percent, while another patient's tumor was “returning rapidly,” according to General Mass Brigham.

After the third patient's cancer treatment, an MRI showed that a single infusion had caused “almost complete tumor regression” in just five days.

“There is still much to do”: researchers urge caution

It should be noted that the new cancer treatment is currently only being studied in three people. This means that, although the results seem notable, much more work needs to be done before such a therapy can be approved and implemented more widely.

This is also highlighted by the co-author of the study, Elizabeth Gerstner, a neuro-oncologist at the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, according to “Live 5 News”: “We reported a dramatic and rapid reaction in these three patients. “Our work so far shows we are making progress, but there is still more to do.”

Marcela Maus, director of the cellular immunotherapy program at Massachusetts General Hospital, agrees. She confirms to Harvard Gazette: “These results are exciting, but they are also just the beginning: they show us that we are on the right path to pursuing a therapy that has the potential to improve the outlook for turning this intractable disease. We are not cured yet. to patients, but that is our audacious goal.”

By Dana Neumann