A Coppell man is the first in North Texas to successfully receive new cancer treatment, approved by the FDA last year.
Personalized cancer therapy is considered the future of cancer care.
Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy, or CAR-T, is a personalized therapy where a patient’s own immune cells are removed from the patient’s body, genetically reprogrammed, then infused back into the patient to identify and attack their cancer as a one-time treatment.
Now, Baylor University Medical Center and Texas Oncology are now offering CAR-T cancer therapy to treat diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. It's the only CAR-T cell therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat this form of cancer.
It is used to treat adult patients who have not responded or who have relapsed after two other kinds of treatment.
"They are reinfused into the patient. They kill the cancer while sparing the patient many of the toxicities that we've seen with other cancer therapies," said Dr. Christopher Maisel, Medical Oncologist at Texas Oncology-Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center.
Matt Bohn, of Coppell, is the first North Texan to successfully undergo the FDA-approved CAR-T therapy for commercial use.
His non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer returned ater two different types of treatment and had his CAR-T therapy delivered in April.
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"I want my body fighting for me and that's exactly what this does," said Bohn.
While there is only one FDA approved CAR-T therapy, medical institutions are conducting clinical trials to test CAR-T therapies for three additional forms of cancer.
More information about other CAR-T studies underway can be found at BSWHealth.com/DallasCancer and TexasOncology.com/CAR-T-Therapy.
