Leukemia is a type of cancer that normally affect blood stem cells. Just like most other types of cancers, it is also dangerous and has possibilities to spread all over the body. There are mainly 4 types of Leukemia:
Acute Myeloid Leukemia:
This cancer attacks myeloid cells. This type of cancer comes rapidly.
Chronic Myeloid Leukemia:
It is also myeloid cells. But it grows more gradually and mainly increases the white blood cells.
Acute Lymphoid Leukemia:
This cancer develops in lymphoid cells rapidly. Main symptoms are swollen lymph nodes and bleeding.
Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia:
This is the cancer of lymphoid cells which develops more gradually. It is normally seen in older patients.
For treating these types of leukemia, a recent treatment is Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy. This therapy has changed the way of treating cancer in the upcoming days. CAR T therapy is mainly the collection and use of the patient’s own T Cells to treat the cancer. This is a type of Adoptive Cell Transfer (ACT) approach to treat diseases.
How CAR T- cell Therapy is Works
Want to know about how the CAR T-Cell therapy is given to the patients? Here I’m going to describe it step by step.
Step – 1: Collection of T cells:
At the first step, T cells are collected from the patient. In this step, blood is takes from the body of the patient and the components like Plasma. Platelets and white blood cells are removed from the T cells.
Step – 2: Reengineering T cells:
After collecting, the T cells are sent to the laboratory or drug manufacturing facility to ensure a safe environment for reengineering. There the T cells are reengineered genetically by introducing DNA into them. As a result, Chimeric Antigen Receptors are produced in the surface of the T cells.
CARs are a type of protein that allows the T cells to be called as an antigen of some tumor cells of human body. At that time, the T cells are known as Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cells or CAR T- cells.
Step – 3: Multiplication of CAR T cells:
When the T cells fully turn into CAR T- cells, those genetically modified cells are multiplied through growing. When the expected number of CAR T- cells are reached, those are sent to the hospital frozen where the patient is being treated.
Step – 4: Thawing the frozen CAR T cells:
After taking the cells to the hospital, the frozen CAR T- cells undergo the thawing process. In this process, the frozen cells are brought in normal condition.
Step – 5: After bringing the CAR T cells into normal condition:
those are inserted into the body of the patient. The cells then become mixed to the bloodstream of the patient and search for the cells that are causing cancer.
The CAR T- cells eradicate the cancer causing cells fully if those are sufficient in number. If there is enough CAR T cells, those remain in the blood of the patient for next few months and keep him safe from some types of blood cancers.
There are a number of advantages to this method of treating leukemia. Besides of killing the cancer cells, CAR T cells helps increasing the grown of T cells. After eradicating the cancer cells, the the CAR T cells remain in the body and work for killing other types of cancers cells. CAR T- cell therapy is more effective than most other conventional ways of treating cancer.
From Where You can Take CAR T- cell Therapy to Remove Cancer?
As CAR T- cell therapy is a newly invented therapy, most of the hospitals don’t have the legal authority to treat cancer with this therapy. But if you search, you’ll find a number of hospitals that use CAR T- therapy to treat leukemia.
I recommend Sheba Academic Medical Center Hospital if you want to treat leukemia by CAR T therapy. They are authorized to perform this method. They have efficient technology to ensure proper cure of leukemia through this method.
Final Verdict
As CAR T therapy is a new way, there might be some confusion regarding this leukemia treating method. May be there are some reactions. So, before undergoing this treatment, you can consult a specialist to know more.
