Bone marrow (or stem cell) transplantation is the forerunner of stem cell therapy for specific blood cancer. As a form of cancer therapeutic, bone marrow transplantation has been in use for more than 50 years and has benefitted more than a million patients worldwide.
Stem Cell Therapies
Cancer Therapeutics
Through the years, scientists continue to uncover the mystery of cancer cells and unlock the potential of stem cells. It was discovered that the spread of cancer cells may have been how these cells camouflage to bypass the immune system’s surveillance, and the answer to combatting cancer may just lie in the immune system to target and destroy these cancerous cells.
Use of Stem Cells in Regenerative Medicine
Since then, scientists have been looking into ways to modify or reprogram the body’s immune system to detect and eliminate cancer cells. One of the major breakthroughs is the approval of CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2017.
CAR-T cell therapy is the first of several potential forms of immune cellular gene therapy that has been approved. Essentially, T cells, a component of the white blood cell that is responsible for identifying and eliminating foreign or mutated cells such as cancer, are extracted and reprogrammed before reintroducing back into the patient to reawaken the immune system’s defences.
Shortly after the approval of CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, FDA gave the green light for the use CAR-T cell therapy as a treatment modality for acute lymphoma in the same year.
Both benches to bedsides studies have also shown positive outcomes in treating illnesses like acute and chronic leukaemia, myeloma, thalassaemia, major and acute myeloid leukaemia, paving way for new treatment options in modern medicine.
