Sabrina Hanna: Visiting Kite Pharma’s CAR T-Cell Manufacturing Facility
Sabrina Hanna, Chief change officer at The Cancer Collaborative and Executive Director of Save Your Skin Foundation, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Last week I had the opportunity to visit Kite Pharma’s CAR T-cell manufacturing facility in LA – what a way to close off precision medicine awareness month.
Talk about personalized medicine.
Take-aways:
– The people working at this facility really understand how the work they do impacts the people who are counting on them. It’s not just cells – it’s people.
– I thought I understood the manufacturing process, but I learned so much and was impressed by how this machine of an operation runs. Definitely more education around CAR-T to come.
– As innovation in this space continues, it’s critical that we focus on getting CAR-T treatments into earlier lines of therapy.
While CAR-T has shown promise in treating relapsed or refractory cancers, it’s clear that there is an opportunity to improve outcomes if we can intervene earlier. We know this, but seeing how the manufacturing process works, makes it that much more important to get it into healthier cells sooner rather than later.
– Retroviral vectors are essentially they ‘unlock’ the potential of CAR-T by carrying the genetic material into the patient’s T cells, turning them into powerful anti cancer agents.
These vectors have the potential to be used beyond CAR-T, opening doors for new treatments across different types of cancer and even other diseases, offering endless possibilities for personalized medicine and future therapies.
– Access to the site is not open to the public but doesn’t mean the information has to stay behind closed doors. (If you’re interested in learning more about cAR-T there are resources available at cancercolab.ca including our most recent webinar on the role of CAR-T in multiple myeloma.
– Finally, I got the opportunity to experience this not only with my colleagues Gurjot Basra from Lymphoma Canada, Christina Sit and Paul O’Connell from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada but also with two Canadians (and their caregivers) who benefited from CAR-T. a reminder of all of the real faces and stories behind these groundbreaking innovations and why the work we do matters.
Truly a fitting way to reflect on the progress and promise of precision medicine as we move forward.
The innovation happening in CAR-T is changing the way we treat cancer. between advances in manufacturing, vector development, our understanding of cancer – we’re getting closer to offering personalized treatments that are not only more effective but also more accessible.
– now we just need to make sure people with cancer are getting the access they need.
Thank you Dior Sarr and Andrew Forgione for making this trip possible.”
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