The problem with the plan was fratricide, among other wanton cellular murders.
Saar Gill and Carl June, cell therapy researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, wanted to make a single treatment that could tackle virtually all blood cancers. A “universal CAR-T,” they’d call it.
It was an audacious goal. Most cell therapies, such as CAR-T, involve removing a patients’ T cells, arming them with GPS coordinates for that tumor, and then reinfusing them into the battlefield. But different tumors require different coordinates.
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