CAR-T revolution: Radical new cancer cure offers better efficiency, one-and-done solution

An unexpected early morning phone call from the hospital is never good news. Birzer’s cancer had grown, and fast — first during one type of chemotherapy, then through a second. What if we could genetically engineer a patient’s own immune cells to spot and fight cancer, as a sort of “best hits” of genetic therapy and immunotherapy? One of Birzer’s sentences was “guinea pigs eat greens like hay and pizza.” Birzer and Johnson owned two guinea pigs, so their diet would be something Birzer normally knew well. “It’s easier to prove why something works when it works than show why it doesn’t work when it doesn’t work,” said Saar Gill, a hematologist and scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who co-founded a company called Carisma Therapeutics using CAR-T technology against solid tumors.