8 BioPharm International
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Next-Generation Biotherapeutics April 2025 www.biopharminternational.com
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E
merging modalities for cancer treatment
have been advancing, giving patients who
have not responded to other treatments
hope. Cell and gene therapies, peptides,
monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), antibody drug con-
jugates (ADCs), and vaccines such as messenger
RNA, as well as a variety of other treatments have
developed in recent years (1).
Sarah Hein, co-founder and CEO of March Biosci-
ences, sees immunotherapies as having a significant
impact on oncology treatments. "Immunotherapies
allow you to retarget the immune system itself and
harness the power of the immune system to directly
fight the cancer within the body," Hein says. "And
for the f irst time, you are seeing curative, poten-
tially, responses [in] a large number of patients who
are achieving long-term, durable remissions. Some
of these are usually just uninhibiting the immune
system, but where we've really been leaning into is
the cell therapies, where you can engineer and tur-
bocharge those cells directly to target a cancer."
C h i me r ic a n t i ge n r e c e p t or (C A R) T- c e l l s a r e
one such innovation. FDA approved the first CAR
T-cell therapy for acute lymphoblasic leukemia in
ch i ld ren i n 2017 w it h ot her CA R T-cel l t herapies
to treat adults with blood cancers approved in the
following years (2).
CAR T-cells are made from a patient's own T cells,
which makes them unique. Blood is collected from
the patient and the T cells are separated, which are
then sent to a lab to be genetically engineered to pro-
duce CAR proteins. Those engineered cells are then
grown to create the product given to the patient (2).
Cell therapies
Accord i ng to Ja son Bock , co-founder a nd CEO of
CTMC, cell therapies leverage the body's own sys-
tem to do what t hese cel ls nat ura l ly do. "Primar-
Emerging
Treatments for Cancer
CAR T-cell therapies, TILs, and other advanced therapies
are pushing progress in the treatment of cancers.
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