Dr. Brentjens on CAR T-Cell Therapy Challenges

Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, associate professor, chief, Cellular Therapeutics Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, talks about the challenges of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-Cell therapies for the treatment of hematologic cancers.

CAR T-Cell therapy works well for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), but does not have as significant of an impact on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Determining how to increase the impact of CAR T-Cell therapy for other types of hematologic malignancies is the a challenge investigators should be working to solve, says Brentjens.

Another challenge is determining how to expand CAR T-Cell therapy into other cancers. To do this, targets on the tumor-cell surfaces for each different tumor type must be identified.