The promise and challenges of chimeric antigen receptor T cells in relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Historically, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are the three traditional modalities of medical treatment for cancer patients. In recent years, cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses body’s immune system to fight against cancer, has increasingly become a viable treatment option for cancer patients. A rapidly emerging cancer immunotherapy approach is called adoptive T cells transfer (ACT), which involves the isolation and reinfusion of tumor-reactive T lymphocytes into cancer patients (1). T cells used for adoptive immunotherapy are either from ex vivo expanded autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), or genetically engineered T cells.