Do you use CAR T cells or work with them in anyway?

Question: Do you use CAR T cells or work with them in anyway?
- Keywords:
  CAR T cell
Asked by Mestres690 to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 13 Mar 2018.
- Ben Mulhearn answered on 13 Mar 2018:
  
  I don’t work with CAR-T cells at all, maybe this is a question for Max 🙂
- Francis Man answered on 13 Mar 2018:
  
  Yes, some of my colleagues prepare CAR-T cells for me and I make the radioactive molecules to image them. It’s a big topic in my lab.
- Max Jamilly answered on 13 Mar 2018:
  
  I don’t work on CAR-T cells myself but lots of people in my lab do. They are a really exciting new strategy for cancer immunotherapy. The process involves four steps: 1) extract a patient’s own “killer” white blood cells; 2) edit the genes so that these cells become targeted to the patient’s cancer; 3) grow the cells in a petri dish until you have loads of them; 4) inject them back into the patient. The engineered T cells then find the patient’s cancer and attack it.
  We’re trying to improve step 2 – making the editing process safer and faster. It’s really exciting work!
- Lizzie Wright answered on 13 Mar 2018:
  
  I have worked with a company that make CAR-T cell therapy and it is a very exciting development in the world of medicine. It is quite a complex treatment to explain to people and is also quite expensive but is a one-off treatment that has a high cure rate for some types of cancer, so its an interesting communications challenge.

Question: Do you use CAR T cells or work with them in anyway?