CAR-T Cells: Engineered Cancer Killers
Channel: Maja Divjak
Date: 2022-11-16

The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is a unique Australian institution consisting of a world-leading cancer research program integrated within a world-leading cancer hospital.

Based on 25 years of research, we are the first site in Australia fully licensed to manufacture Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cells for treatment of blood cancers such as leukaemias and lymphomas. The process involves engineering a patient’s own T cells to express Chimeric Antigen Receptors, or CARs on the cell surface.

When the CAR-T cells are re-infused into the patient, they multiply rapidly and the CARs enable them to specifically seek and destroy cancer cells throughout the body. For some patients this has proven to be a miracle treatment when all other options have been exhausted.

This production explains how cancer cells can avoid detection by our immune cells. We then learn how our immune cells can be super charged by CAR-T technology to kill cancer cells and how this works at the molecular and cellular levels using 3D animation and ground-breaking microscopy techniques.

The production informs patients and the interested lay person about this unique technology and the great progress made by Peter Mac scientists into understanding cancer biology and developing revolutionary treatments, such as CAR-T cells, to combat cancer.