A 3D illustration of CAR T cells attacking cancer cell

The boundless potential of CAR T cell therapy, from cancer to chronic diseases: Q&A with Carl June

CAR T cell pioneer Carl June, MD, explains how CAR T cell therapy, which has been transformative for blood cancer treatment, holds the potential to help millions more patients, if it can be successfully translated to other conditions.

  • August 22, 2023

For most of modern medicine, cancer drugs have been developed the same way: by designing molecules to treat diseased cells. With the advent of immunotherapy, that changed. For the first time, scientists engineered patients’ own immune systems to recognize and attack diseased cells.

One of the best examples of this pioneering type of medicine is CAR T cell therapy. Invented in the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania by Carl June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, CAR T cell therapy works by collecting T cells from a patient, modifying those cells in the lab so that they are designed to destroy cancerous cells, and reinfusing them into the patient. June’s research led to the first FDA approval for this type of therapy, in 2017. Six different CAR T cell therapies are now approved to treat various types of blood cancers.

CAR T cell therapy holds the potential to help millions more patients—if it can be successfully translated to other conditions. June and colleagues, including Daniel Baker, a fourth-year doctoral student in Cell and Molecular Biology, Zoltan Arany, MD, PhD, the Samuel Bellet Professor of Cardiology, Joseph Baur, PhD, a professor of Physiology, and Jonathan A. Epstein, MD, the William Wikoff Smith Professor, executive vice dean and chief scientific officer in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed this potential in a recent perspective for Nature.

As research at Penn and elsewhere moves into early-stage clinical trials, it’s no longer just a theoretical possibility: CAR T cell therapy is making waves in solid tumor cancer types and even beyond cancer, for other diseases. Here, June and Baker, a member of June’s lab, explain how.

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