University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center launched a new clinical trial for CAR-T, joining a select group of hospitals offering the therapy and a smaller group of hospitals manufacturing the CAR-T cells.
CAR-T therapy has been called a “living drug” and is part of a rapidly emerging immunotherapy approach called adoptive cell transfer (ACT), which collects and uses patients’ own immune cells to treat their cancer. There are several types of ACT, but CAR-T cell therapy is showing the most promise in clinical development, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
UH’s clinical trial will use CAR-T cells made from a patient’s own genetically-modified white blood cells, called T-cells, to boost their immune system to detect and attack their cancer.
The Phase I clinical trial, funded by UH Seidman, will study the safety of CAR-T therapy for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes. The clinical trial aims to enroll 12 to 15 current UH adult patients with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who have not responded to standard therapies. Paolo Caimi, MD, hematologist/oncologist at UH Seidman and Associate Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, serves as the principal investigator of the study.
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