Fighting Cancer With Rejection-Resistant, ‘Off-The-Shelf’ Therapeutic T Cells

Cancer patients today can be a part of the following clinical scenario: A patient comes to the hospital where physicians and scientists analyze his or her tumor to identify cancer-specific markers that would serve as targets for the novel therapy. Blood is drawn from the patient and sent to Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Cell and Gene Therapy where the immune T cells are transformed into cells with a mission to identify and kill cells with the tumor-specific tags. The final cells are infused back into the patient to complete their job. "At the Center, we genetically engineer the patient's T cells to arm them with the tools they need to identify the patient's tumor-specific markers and eliminate the cancer," said Dr. Maksim Mamonkin, assistant professor of pathology & immunology and member of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor.