Doctors Say Cancer Patients Cured a Decade After Immune Cell Therapy at

University of Pennsylvania
By Andy Corbley - Feb 7, 2022

A healthy human T-Cell; National Institutes of Health

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A 75-year-old California man has, after ten years of observation, been declared free of cancer after an
immune cell treatment wiped out his blood cancer and a decade passed without it returning.
The treatment is one of several next-generation treatments for cancer, called CAR-T cell therapy, which
retrains one of the most effective immune cells to target cancer fast, and then stay on patrol for years,
evolving to keep the cancer at bay.

“I’m doing great right now. I’m still very active. I was running half marathons until 2018,” Doug Olson who
lives in Pleasanton, California, told local news. “This is a cure. And they don’t use the word lightly.”

In fact, it was only three weeks after the experimental treatment was administered that Olson’s University of
Pennsylvania doctors, Carl June and David Porter, got to sit Olson down and tell him the good news that they
were not able to find a single cancer cell in his body.

The cancer-fighting paradigm for years had been to attack cancer cells radioactively, or with other
chemicals, due to the cancer’s ability to disguise itself from the host’s immune system. Now several
methods of therapies that involve reconfiguring the immune system to do its job right are being used on
thousands of patients.

MORE: Experimental Treatment in Spain Puts 18 Cancer Patients in Complete Remission

CAR stands for the protein “chimeric antigen receptors” which can detect tumors and allow the T-cells to
attack them. They’re extracted from the patient, genetically-engineered to produce CAR, and then
reintroduced. So far, five such treatments have been approved by the FDA to treat leukemias, lymphomas,
and myelomas. Dr. June estimates that tens of thousands of people have received CAR-T cell treatment so
far.

While it can cure people, it’s not a miracle cure. It remains expensive and technically demanding, while
leading to only around 25%-35% of people into total remission, as is the case with Olson. Dr. June and Porter
believe that with continual refinement, that percentage can increase.

RELATED: Your Body’s Own ‘Cannabis-Like’ Substance Can Reduce Chronic Inflammation During Exercise

As for Olson, he’s regularly running with his son to try and keep himself in prime condition. “If my cancer was
gone, I certainly didn’t want to die of a heart attack,” he told Nature.

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(WATCH the ABC6 video for this story below.)

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