Topic
Engineered T-cell cancer immunotherapy, including the shift from ex vivo manufacturing toward in vivo CAR-T generation with mRNA.
Researchers at Portugal's iBET argue that capping CAR T cell expansion at three days or less would yield fitter cells at lower doses. Marta Costa's group says the approach also needs faster release assays, since several now take a week or more.
Reality
Chinese groups are developing 82% of the 140 in vivo CAR-T drugs in animal or human testing, a Boston Consulting Group analysis found. Developers elsewhere can expect the field's first clinical evidence, and much of its competition, to come from Chinese trials.
Reality
The Berlin phase 1 trial was built to measure cytokine release syndrome rather than remission, and its six-patient denominator carries no comparator, so the ten-patient second phase against an approved B-cell drug is the one that settles anything.
Reality
A 3-year-old whose liver cancer outlasted surgery and three lines of chemotherapy has been in complete remission for a year after CAR T cells given entirely in the outpatient setting, Baylor doctors report.
Reality
Ninety percent of drug candidates that reach human trials are never approved. A Norwegian group argues some of that triage belongs in donor blood, where nanoparticles meet the plasma proteins and immune cells that settle their fate.
Reality