According to WHO 16% of the death worldwide are due to cancer, the annual cost on the health care system is about 1 trillion dollars. Chances are you probably known someone who had cancer.
There has been some rapid progress in the battle of cancer, today there has been major breakthrough in this field and its promising, it comes in form of a new treatment for aggressive types of cancer that can鈥檛 be cured with chemo or radiation therapy, this is called car-t (chimeric antigen receptor).
How does car-t work?
The treatment begins by extracting something called t-cells from the patient鈥檚 blood, t-cells are a type of white blood cells that are integral to the immune system, they are naturally built to seek out and attack infections in the body, these t-cells are mixed with a disarmed virus. That鈥檚 engineered to produce a special kind of receptor on its surface, these receptors are synthetic molecules that don鈥檛 exist naturally [CHIMERIC ANTIGEN RECEPTOR (CAR)] these newly engineered receptors allow the t-cells to find, recognized and destroy cancer cells, they do this by attaching the artificially engineered receptors (CD19 ANTIGEN) onto the surface of the cancer cells, injecting them with poison and destroying it.
The engineered t-cells then multiply and live within the body providing long-term relief because these cells multiply within you and you would never have to go in again for a top-up dose, it鈥檚 like a onetime treatment.
The treatment is a custom living drug taken from the patient鈥檚 blood and fights cancer within the patient for extended periods of time.
What are the down sides?
The first one is a fatal side-effect swelling of the brain known as cerebral edema, this has unfortunately led to some deaths (these occur in rare cases).
The second down side is the price, it cost $475,000, this is really costly.
Novartis (pharmaceutical company who treats cancer patients with car-t ) promises not to charge patients who don鈥檛 respond within a month.
Some experts in the field say that the price will come down as the manufacturing process becomes standardized.
I hope this article is helpful.
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