Science

Today's Cell Therapy Insights Shaping Tomorrow

Over 25 years of industry-wide cell therapy research has resulted in once-inconceivable treatment options for patients with serious blood cancers who previously had few choices. Ten years after the first generation of autologous CAR T cell therapies, the fruits of that research are being seen, as patient stories renew hope.

As in the early days of any scientific field, scientists and other stakeholders in cell therapy still face an uphill climb. Cell therapy is a personalized medicine, and the process to get each treatment to patients is complex and intricate. Scaling operations remains a galvanizing challenge and a major focus of players across the industry. 

Next-generation cell therapies, including allogeneic, or “off-the-shelf” approaches where CAR T cells are derived from healthy donors or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), have the potential to mitigate operational challenges by removing the initial step in which a patient’s cells are harvested for CAR T manufacturing. But unknowns remain — the science is so new that we are only starting to gather data on the durability of this approach, which will make it a key priority of research moving forward.

Translating cell therapy science to treat solid tumors has also presented challenges, and researchers are actively exploring new approaches and targets that will extend the promise of cell therapy beyond blood cancers. There is potential for a long-term sustainable therapy in these diseases with the use of an auto-antigen as the external chimeric binder on the CAR T cell.

Development programs at Bristol Myers Squibb are centered around patient needs, but cell therapy requires additional consideration, as the medicine itself originates from the person being treated. Patients are at the center of every decision the company makes, from the design of clinical trials to how patients receive treatments in the real world.

Certain strategies can help make the cell therapy treatment experience easier for patients. Depending on a person’s health, some cell therapies can be administered in the outpatient setting, allowing the individual to recover at home while being closely monitored by his or her care team post-infusion. In addition, technology such as the TempTraq^® wearable temperature-monitoring device offered to Bristol Myers Squibb CAR T patients can assist patients and caregivers with temperature monitoring outside the hospital setting during the post-infusion monitoring period.