REVOLUTIONARY, LIFESAVING IMMUNOTHERAPY TAKES SIGNIFICANT STEP TOWARD FDA APPROVAL
Pictured Above: Emma Whitehead (Survivor and first child ever given the altered cells) and her parents, Tom and Kari Whitehead
July 12, 2017 was a very significant day in our progress toward cancer cures.
Over the past two decades, LLS has been funding an innovative therapy for blood cancer patients called CAR-T immunotherapy. We invested $21 million in the work of Dr. Carl June and his team at University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who have advanced this therapy.
Three years ago, Novartis came on board to help get this therapy over the FDA finish line and, yesterday, an FDA advisory panel unanimously recommended approval of Novartis’ CAR-T immunotherapy for pediatric acute lymphocytic leukemia patients who have no other treatment options.
I urge you to read The LLS Blog to learn more about this significant breakthrough for cancer patients and LLS’s pioneering role in its development.
Further, to demonstrate LLS’s increasing leadership in the cancer arena, we were able to secure a quote from our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Gwen Nichols, in a New York Times story published immediately following the FDA advisory panel news. According to Gwen:
“It’s a new world, an exciting therapy,” said Dr. Gwen Nichols, the chief medical officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which paid for some of the research that led to the treatment.
The next step, she said, will be to determine “what we can combine it with and is there a way to use it in the future to treat patients with less disease, so that the immune system is in better shape and really able to fight.” She added, “This is the beginning of something big.”
Here’s a link to the full story:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/health/fda-novartis-leukemia-gene-medicine.html?mwrsm=Facebook&referer=http://m.facebook.com
Here is a fact sheet about CAR-T Cell Therapy:
http://www.lls.org/sites/default/files/National/USA/Pdf/Publications/FSHP1_CART_Factsheet_June2017_FINAL.pdf
CAR T-cell Therapy: A Hopeful Option in Cancer Treatment Video:
http://www.lls.org/patient-education-videos/car-t-cell-therapy-a-hopeful-option-in-cancer-treatment |
