Chimeric antigen receptor (CAT) T-cell therapy is a way to get immune cells called T cells (a type of white blood cell) to fight cancer by changing them in the lab so they can find and destroy the cancer cells.
CAT-T cell therapy is also sometimes talked about as a type of cell-based gene therapy because it involves altering genes inside T cells to help them attack the cancer.
Thus, immune system recognizes foreign substance in the body by finding protein called antigens on the surface of those cells.
Immune cells called T cells have their own protein called receptors that attacks the foreign antigen and help trigger other parts of the immune system to destroy the foreign substances.
In CAR-T cell therapy T cells taken from the patient’s blood and are changed in the lab by adding a gene for a receptor (called CAR) which helps the T cells to attach to the specific cancer cell antigen. The CAT-T cells are given back to the patient.
- T cell (collect blood) _______ 2. Isolation and reprogramming of T cells
(CART cell)
- Multiplication ___________ Injection _____ 5. CART cell attack cancer cell