BETA - What is CAR-T cell therapy and how is this drug class used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia?

What is CAR T cell therapy and how is this drug class used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia? So CAR T cell therapy for CLL. So CAR T stands for chymandric antigen receptor therapy. And this is a very interesting and novel treatment, now approved for many other diseases. And recently we're very excited to have this approved for CLL also. So what CAR T therapy basically is, it's an immunotherapy where we harness the patient's own immune system to attack their cancer. We use what's called the cell of the immune system, what's called the T lymphocyte. It's a normal T lymphocyte of a patient with that cancer. So those cells are harvested, those are taken out, and that's from the blood. You don't have to do any specific procedures, bone marrow or anything for that. Those are taken out from the patient and then they are sent to the lab for engineering. What that engineering does is that that makes the T cell express some of the antigens that are specific for the tumor that it's going to attack. For example CLL, for CLL we make it express CD19. We have other CARs that make them express CD20 and there are others in development or in clinical trials that are looking at other antigens. So basically by engineering you convert them into super T cells and you expand them and those are infused back into the patient. When they're infused back into the patient what happens is that these super T cells, these engineered T cells go after the cells that express the antigen that was made to express on these T cells. So basically they're magnets for these. They go after these and chase these and destroy these cells and that's how they work. They're very effective and we have the first one approved for treatment of CLL. It's very interesting. It took more than 10 years for the approval. The first cases that created a lot of excitement about CAR therapy, the first cases were CLL cases actually but the research for other diseases continued and it led to approval of CAR therapy for ALL, for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma and CAR T for CLL lagged behind and there's a reason for that. There is other diseases. The patients have robust immune system. Their immune system is very intact. Patients with CLL have a weakened immune system and in a therapy where you're harnessing the patient's own immune system to attack the cancer, that becomes very challenging. So there's ongoing research how we can make the CAR therapy better for patients with CLL who have a weakened immune system. So there's ongoing exciting research about that.