About 18 years ago, a 4-year-old girl with a rare nerve cell cancer received an infusion of immune cells that were genetically engineered to fight the disease. Since then, she has remained cancer-free, possibly making her the longest-surviving patient with cancer who received this tailored treatment, researchers report February 17 in Nature Medicine.
As part of a clinical trial, the girl received CAR-T cell therapy, a treatment that requires removing some of a patient’s immune cells and programming them to target and kill cancer cells before returning them. Since 2017, seven CAR-T cell therapies have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a few blood cancers.