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UVM Cancer Center to Launch CAR T-Cell Program
Novel therapy turns patient’s T-cells into ‘personalized cancer-killing machines’
Starting this spring, the UVM Cancer Center will offer a novel, highly effective form of cancer treatment called CAR T-cell therapy. The UVM Cancer Center will be the only health care institution in Vermont and northern New York to provide this treatment.
CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy, or CART as it is known, is a promising treatment that harnesses the power of the body’s own immune system to target cancer cells. Normally, our T cells attack foreign invaders like cold viruses, fighting off infections that could make us sick. While T cells can kill off many kinds of cancers before they become established, cancer that is developed and diagnosable is able to evade the immune system.
But maybe not for much longer.
CAR T-cell therapy re-engineers a patient’s own T cells to recognize a specific cancer, turning the re-programmed T cells into personalized cancer-killing machines.
Currently used to treat lymphomas, leukemia, and multiple myeloma, this leading-edge therapy gives patients another option when chemotherapy or other current treatments fail. The therapy also offers great promise for someday treating patients with breast, prostate, and other types of cancers.
“It’s unlike any other therapy that’s ever been given before,” saysJames Gerson, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the Larner College of Medicine, who joined the UVM Cancer Center in September 2022 and will direct the new CAR T-Cell program. “This therapy is a living, breathing treatment that goes back into the patient and lives with them for years. It’s exciting to be starting a new CAR T-cell program here at UVM, and to offer this potentially curative therapy to patients in the region.”
Pictured above: Dr. Gerson sits in an exam room at the UVM Medical Center with a blurred CAR T-cell image displayed on a computer monitor in the background. (Photo: Andy Duback)
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