Our current state in immunotherapy
CAR T cell therapy is a form of personalized immunotherapy. Doctors take a patient’s T cells, reprogram them in the lab to recognize the cancer, and then put them back into the patient to hunt those cancer cells. This is not chemotherapy. This is the immune system being upgraded to do targeted killing.
Right now, six CAR T therapies are approved in the United States and Europe. All of them are for blood cancers.
Kymriah, is approved for children and young adults with relapsed or refractory B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It is also used in certain difficult lymphomas. This was the first CAR T ever approved, in 2017, and it basically proved the whole field is real.
Yescarta, is approved for adults with large B cell lymphoma and related aggressive lymphomas after other treatments stop working. Tecartus, is used for mantle cell lymphoma and some leukemias. Breyanzi, is another option for large B cell lymphoma in adults. These therapies all target CD19, a marker found on malignant B cells.
Two more CAR T products are approved for multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow. Abecma and Carvykti, both target a protein found on myeloma cells. These are used when myeloma has relapsed after standard treatments.
The impact of CAR T is huge. These therapies are being used in patients whose cancers did not respond to chemotherapy, radiation, stem cell transplant, or targeted drugs. Some of those patients are now staying in remission for years.
What comes next is already in motion. Clinical trials are running to push CAR T into acute myeloid leukemia and into solid tumors. They are engineering next generation CAR T cells that can release their own supportive cytokines, resist exhaustion, and avoid attacking healthy cells.
In short: CAR T therapy went from idea to real clinic-approved cancer treatment in under a decade. Six personalized cell therapies are already saving lives in leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, and the technology is still evolving. We are not at the finish line. We are at the starting point of a new way to treat cancer.