What Is Myeloma CAR T-Cell Therapy?
What Is Myeloma CAR T-Cell Therapy? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
How does CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy work to fight myeloma? Dr. Krina Patel, a myeloma specialist and researcher, explains how this novel therapy uses your immune system to treat the disease.
Dr. Krina Patel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Dr. Patel is involved in research and cares for patients with multiple myeloma. Learn more about Dr. Patel, here.
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Transcript:
Katherine:
What is CAR T-cell therapy?
Dr. Patel:
So, CAR-T cells are sort of a biologic immune therapy where we are able to take T cells, a type of lymphocyte which help us, normally. All of us have them in our blood.
They come from our bone marrow, go into our blood, and they sort of go around in the blood and look for bad things, pathogens. So, infections, even cancer cells, our T cells help get rid of all of those bad things that we’re not supposed to have. And they each have a receptor. And so, T cells have this night vision, and they’re made for a specific type of pathogen out there that we aren’t supposed to have that can hurt us.
And so, what we can is to either take your own T cells out, or sometimes with something called allo CAR-T use a normal donor’s T cells. And when we take them, we basically can put a new receptor in there, a new night vision; and so, now they are trained to go after something that’s specific on the myeloma instead of a bacteria or a virus or anything. And basically, we grow those cells, and then we give those cells back to our patient after a low dose of chemotherapy, just so these T cells can go in, find the myeloma, use that night vision to find that myeloma wherever it is, kill, and then it actually causes other immune cells in your system to come there and start helping to kill as well.
And then, they start coming back down again. And so, really, it’s a novel way of using your own immune system, or somebody else’s, but to actually enhance both by the target to get that myeloma precisely as well as making more of them so that there’s enough to go around and kill all the cells that we possibly can.
