CAR T Cells, Immunologic and Cellular Therapies in Hematologic Malignancies

The concept of adoptive cell therapy to treat cancers originated with the advent of high dose chemotherapy followed by allogenic bone marrow transplantation (allo-BMT) for patients with hematologic malignancies. What would become clear over time was that the T cells present in the donor graft could mediate both a deleterious graft versus host disease (GvHD) as well as a beneficial graft versus leukemia (GvL) [1]. In the former, T cells recognize antigens on normal host tissues as foreign and attack, in the latter, donor T cells recognize antigens on host hematopoietic cells including residual leukemia tumor cells eliminating residual tumor and resulting in durable disease remissions.
Source: Best Practice and Research. Clinical Haematology - Category: Hematology Authors: Tags: Preface Source Type: research