Car T Therapy Side Effects

Car t cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that s offering hope to some non hodgkin lymphoma patients but the side effects are different from those of other cancer treatments.

Car t therapy side effects.

These patients have run out of treatment options. T cell transfer therapy can cause side effects which people experience in different ways. Car t cells are made by extracting thousands of a patient s t cells sending them to a lab where they re outfitted with genes and proteins that improve their cancer fighting prowess and then re infusing them into the patient. The side effects you may have and how serious they are will depend on how healthy you are before treatment your type of cancer how advanced it is the type of t cell transfer therapy you are receiving and the dose.

Some people have had serious side effects from this treatment especially as the car t cells multiply in the body to fight the cancer. Car t cell therapy side effects. Felipe samaniego m d shares what to know. The most common side effects seen are.

Severe muscle or joint pain shortness of breath low blood pressure and fast heart rate. A remodeled car t cell therapy causes fewer neurologic side effects and is equally effective as the original form of the therapy according to results from the first clinical trial of the treatment in patients with b cell lymphomas. These include neurotoxicity which can result in headache confusion and. Despite the therapeutic successes of car t cell therapy the intervention carries the risk of severe side effects.

Detailed studies of two potential side effects of an emerging cancer immunotherapy could eventually help make this strategy car t cell therapy safer for patients. The car t cell targets the cd19 antigen on cancer cells. Car t cell therapy is used in patients with high tumor burden and advanced disease. The studies examined cytokine release syndrome and neurologic toxicities.

You won t have hair loss that commonly follows chemotherapy. Ironically some of the adverse events are due to cytokine release that occurs because the patient is having a positive response to therapy. Serious side effects of this release can include very high fevers. Car t cell therapy is a form of immunotherapy in which patients t cells are modified to become better at tracking down and destroying tumor cells.

However side effects of car t cell therapy can be daunting. Instead car t cell therapy can lead to a short lived but severe reaction called cytokine release syndrome. Severe nausea vomiting diarrhea. As car t cells multiply they cause massive amounts of chemicals called cytokines to be released into the blood.