By Sara Youngblood Gregory – Mayo Clinic –
For many scientists and doctors, immunotherapy that uses someone’s own immune system to target and attack cancer cells is the next and best frontier of cancer treatment.
Over the last decade, immunotherapy-focused research has expanded, and results point toward promising, less arduous cancer treatments. Some immune system-focused drugs, for example, have shrunk or even eliminated tumors altogether — even in people with advanced cancers.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy is one type of immunotherapy. Sometimes, likened to a “smart drug” or “living drug,” CAR-T cell therapy relies on genetically modified immune cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells — and only cancer cells, in theory.
