Therapy Shows Brain Cancer Remission in 5 Days
Research into a new treatment for glioblastoma, a deadly type of brain cancer, has shown some really promising early results.
Scientists at the Mass General Cancer Center in Massachusetts have been testing a treatment called CAR-T cell therapy. This treatment uses a person’s own immune cells to fight the cancer. It’s kind of like giving the body extra soldiers to help fight off the cancer. While this type of treatment has worked well for certain blood cancers, it hasn’t been as successful for solid tumors like glioblastoma.
In their study, they tried combining CAR-T therapy with another type of treatment called bispecific antibodies. They found that this combination worked well in lab tests.
They tested this treatment on three patients between March and July 2023. They took some of each patient’s immune cells, modified them in a special way in the lab, and then put them back into the patient’s body. The patients had some side effects like fevers and feeling a bit out of it, but overall, they handled it okay.
What’s really exciting is that after just one treatment, the patients saw a big reduction in the size of their tumors. One patient even had almost all of their tumor disappear in just five days!
While these early results are really promising, there’s still a lot more research to be done to make sure this treatment is safe and effective for more people.
The researchers are hopeful that this could be a big step forward in treating glioblastoma, but they want to make sure they get it right before they celebrate too much. They’re determined to keep working until they find a treatment that really works for everyone with this tough-to-beat cancer.