T-cell therapy offers advance in cancer treatment [Video]

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) – A new cancer treatment that uses a person’s own immune cells has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use against skin cancer, and now trials are underway for using it to combat lung cancer as well.

For a cancerous tumor to grow, it must overpower immune cells known as T cells. The point of T-cell therapy, or TIL therapy, is to replicate those immune cells and give them a critical boost.

“T-cell is a major cancer-attacking cell,” explained Dr. Kai He, a thoracic medical oncologist and physician-scientist at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). “In general, we think they might not be robust enough to eradicate cancer, that’s why cancer grows.”

By removing a small piece of a patient’s tumor, isolating the t-cells and manufacturing a living drug that infuses billions of …