Nearly 620,000 new cases of lymphoma have been diagnosed worldwide, according to a 2020 World Cancer Research Fund report. Survival rates have improved with advances in treatment, such as CAR-T cell therapy .
CAR-T cell therapy is an individualized treatment that gives hope to patients diagnosed with different types of lymphoma.
“Lymphoma, quite simply, is basically a cancer of your immune system,” says Dr. Madiha Iqbal , a hematologist – oncologist at the Mayo Clinic.
Patients newly diagnosed with lymphoma have been offered a combination of chemotherapy and antibody-based therapies . But for people who don’t respond to two or more of these therapies, CAR-T cell therapy may be an option.
“Before the advent of CAR-T cells, patients who did not respond to two of the chemotherapy pathways had a very small chance of surviving for about six months,” says Dr. Iqbal.
CAR-T cell therapy can take up to a few weeks in which a patient’s T cells — which normally help fight infection — are collected and genetically modified to target the lymphoma.
After receiving a low dose of chemotherapy, the patient is injected again with the modified cells. So that these cells can then attack and destroy the lymphoma.
“Patients whose prognosis was very bad can now be treated,” says Dr. Iqbal.
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Media contact:
Sharon Theimer, Mayo Clinic Contact email: newsbureau@mayo.edu
