Building a Better Car

Since the beginning of the CAR‑T cell era, 6 products have been approved in the United States But there was always a nagging concern that the vectors used to genetically engineer the patient’s T cells could integrate into the wrong site in the genome, resulting in insertional mutagenesis. Unfortunately, there were not enough data, until recently, to know just how great that risk might be. In addition, the production of autologous CAR‑T cells (ie, derived from the patient’s own cells) is an expensive, labor-intensive process that takes several weeks or even longer.

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