On September 13, 2022, Stanford Health Care’s (SHC) Blood and Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy program performed its 500th Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy (CAR T-cell) infusion. The multi-disciplinary team including physicians, fellows, advanced practice providers, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, case management, clinic staff, and administrators celebrated the milestone together. Congratulations to the team!
Stanford is leading the way in CAR T-cell therapy. This exciting therapy is a paradigm shift in cellular immunotherapy. It harnesses the body’s own immune system to attack cancers. Stanford researchers helped to develop the first FDA-approved cancer cell therapies, and Stanford remains at the leading edge of CAR T-cell therapy research to expand the use of cell therapy across more types of cancer, including solid cancers and brain tumors. Since the first clinical trial patient treated in 2016, the cancer cell therapy program continues to grow substantially. In 2017, the first CAR T-cell therapy was approved by the FDA, and there are now five FDA-approved CAR T-cell therapies. To date, adult SHC patients ages 19 - 80+ years old have been treated across a variety of cancer disease lines.
September 2022 - By Sarah Pelta