From Lab to Life: Expanding the Power of CAR T-Cells

Now, to set the stage for all of this, I think maybe both of you could just comment a little bit.

The idea of leveraging our own immune system to attack cancer is amazing.

you know, very commonly held now.

But it always hasn't been that way.

We know that cancer is very good at cloaking itself from the immune system.

But perhaps you could tell us to set the stage for eventually talking about CAR-T.

How is it that potentially our own body can be leveraged to fight cancer? So maybe, Reshmi, we can start with you.

Yeah, sure.

So our immune cells always have the capacity to fight with cancer cells and kill cancer cells.

And mostly two types of lymphocytes play important role like T-cells and NK-cells.

And both of these cells are really good at doing their job.

But obviously, we know people get cancer.

Why? Because these cells either become dysfunctional in patients or they cannot do its job because of some other factors around them.

Some other proteins surrounding them makes them dysfunctional.

So sometimes they cannot do their job to its best.

And that is where this adaptive cell therapy comes to play.

So we have to take blood from patients.

take the immune cells out like T cells or NK cells.

And in car therapy, especially we are making them more active and giving them more specificity.

So we are telling these immune cells or T cells, especially to go and kill only cancer cells and spare the normal cells.

So that's the specificity part.

And also for safety in terms, you know, it's our own, our patient's own immune cells.

So Safety-wise also, it's not a big problem.

So using a patient's own immune cells, I think it's very attractive, especially in CAR T field, we are giving them specificity as well.

And also we can expand them ex vivo in a large number because in patients, they will not have enough number of T-cells.

Now, to set the stage for all of this, I think maybe both of you could just comment a little bit.

The idea of leveraging our own immune system to attack cancer is amazing.

you know, very commonly held now.

But it always hasn't been that way.

We know that cancer is very good at cloaking itself from the immune system.

But perhaps you could tell us to set the stage for eventually talking about CAR-T.

How is it that potentially our own body can be leveraged to fight cancer? So maybe, Reshmi, we can start with you.

Yeah, sure.

So our immune cells always have the capacity to fight with cancer cells and kill cancer cells.

And mostly two types of lymphocytes play important role like T-cells and NK-cells.

And both of these cells are really good at doing their job.

But obviously, we know people get cancer.

Why? Because these cells either become dysfunctional in patients or they cannot do its job because of some other factors around them.

Some other proteins surrounding them makes them dysfunctional.

So sometimes they cannot do their job to its best.

And that is where this adaptive cell therapy comes to play.

So we have to take blood from patients.

take the immune cells out like T cells or NK cells.

And in car therapy, especially we are making them more active and giving them more specificity.

So we are telling these immune cells or T cells, especially to go and kill only cancer cells and spare the normal cells.

So that's the specificity part.

And also for safety in terms, you know, it's our own, our patient's own immune cells.

So Safety-wise also, it's not a big problem.

So using a patient's own immune cells, I think it's very attractive, especially in CAR T field, we are giving them specificity as well.

And also we can expand them ex vivo in a large number because in patients, they will not have enough number of T-cells.