Advances such as new nontoxic, more effective immunotherapy and improvements that significantly reduce recovery times for complicated surgeries are making cancer treatments less taxing. On the horizon are more ways to give patients the greatest chance of survival while also reducing negative consequences of treatment. Some therapies also will improve the experience, such as chemotherapy consisting of quick subcutaneous injections instead of hours in an infusion chair.
“It’s not just about the cure but how we get there,” said Stephen J. Forman, MD, director of the Hematologic Malignancies Research Institute. “At City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S. with its National Medical Center named top 5 in the nation for cancer by U.S. News & World Report, we don’t rest until we’ve found a safer and better treatment. We already administer cell therapy in the outpatient setting; our focus now is ensuring patients receive the most innovative treatment first. We’re moving leading-edge therapies like CAR T closer to frontline, altogether avoiding the need for the high-risk, multiyear commitment to chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant.”
CAR T-cell therapy modifies a patient’s own T cells to recognize and kill cancer cells, while bone marrow transplant (BMT) replaces damaged bone marrow with healthy stem cells from a donor or the patient themselves. Both therapies are primarily used for blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. Compared to BMT, CAR T typically involves a less rigorous conditioning regimen, a shorter hospital stay and fewer long-term complications, such as graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), in which donor immune cells attack the patient’s tissues. In certain cases, oncologists are now using CAR T instead of chemotherapy or BMT, when previously it was used more often after chemotherapy stopped working or when patients weren’t eligible for BMT.
Learn more about City of Hope’s work with immunotherapies that was presented at ASH 2024.
