After More Than Ten Years Of Effort: CAR-T Finally Cured Cancer Completely

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More than a decade later, when doctors announced that his cancer was cured, Doug Olson recalled the fall of 2010 when he participated in a clinical trial of CAR-T cell therapy. He still remembers his excitement and hope for the scientific experiment. He said that when he was doing scientific research, like many young scientists, he dreamed of making a discovery that would have an impact on human beings, but he never thought that it would end up in this way—as a patient participating in a CAR that changes the way of cancer treatment- T clinical trials.

The rise of cancer immunotherapy has brought new hope to the majority of cancer patients. Among them, CAR-T cell therapy has proven to be a powerful weapon against blood cancers. However, little is known about the long-term potential and clonal stability of these genetically engineered CAR-T cells reinfused into cancer patients.

Cancer treatment: CAR-T cells & cistanche herb

Doug Olson, an unfortunate patient with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), was diagnosed in 1996 with CLL, a slow-growing but incurable leukemia. After years of chemotherapy, his condition continued to progress, at which point he began to consider a bone marrow transplant. David Porter, his attending doctor at the time, told him that the University of Pennsylvania was about to start a clinical trial of CAR-T cell therapy. After reading the trial protocol, he felt very promising in the medical industry and decided to participate in the clinical trial.

On September 13, 2010, he became the second leukemia patient in the world to receive CAR-T cell therapy. The doctors who formulated the treatment plan for him included Carl June and David Porter, but at the time no one knew what the CAR-T cell therapy was. What kind of effect can be achieved, they hoped that these genetically engineered CAR-T cells could survive in the body for a month, and even dared not expect to cure leukemia.

A few weeks after receiving CAR-T cell therapy, Doug Olson had no cancer cells in his body. After doctors told him the news, he was very optimistic that he had gotten rid of cancer, but his doctors were not so sure.

The time has come to 2022, more than a decade has passed, the CAR-T cells in Doug Olson are still working normally, and he is still in remission. During this period, Carl June was also known as the father of CAR-T for his contributions to CAR-T. Now, he said, it can now be acknowledged that CAR-T cured Doug Olson and that CAR-T can really cure leukemia.

On February 2, 2022, Carl June et al. published a paper titled: Decade-long leukemia remissions with the persistence of CD4+ CAR T cells in Nature, detailing the world's first patient to receive CAR-T therapy, Bill Ludwig and No. The treatment results of the two Doug Olson who received CAR-T treatment. The two have not detected signs of leukemia for more than ten years after treatment, but unfortunately, Bill Ludwig died of new coronary pneumonia in January 2021.

This study provides a proof-of-concept for the long-term therapeutic efficacy and safety of integration into the body of CAR-T cell therapy.

CAR-T cell therapy & cistanche supplement can treat cancer effectively

CAR-T cells are the natural anti-infection and anti-cancer immune cells T cells from the blood of cancer patients are genetically reprogrammed in vitro to express receptor proteins that can recognize specific antigens on cancer cells in the patient, which is the so-called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). These genetically engineered CAR-T cells are then expanded using cell culture techniques and reinjected into patients to attack cancer cells.

Since 2017, the US FDA has successively approved five CAR-T cell therapies for the treatment of leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma. Carl June estimates that tens of thousands of people around the world have now received CAR-T cell therapy.

Although CAR-T has brought great hope to cancer patients, especially blood cancer patients, the therapy also has many limitations - very expensive, high risk of treatment, and high technical difficulty. Therefore, at present, CAR-T is still used as the last resort after other conventional treatments are ineffective.

In addition, although some patients achieved long-term remission after receiving CAR-T therapy, not every patient was so lucky. In the beginning, only about 25%-35% of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) were receiving CAR-T therapy. after complete remission. Since then, with the improvement of technology, this proportion has increased year by year, but some patients who were in complete remission have still relapsed. Therefore, long-term follow-up studies of cancer patients receiving CAR-T therapy can reveal which factors contribute to durable remission, which is particularly important for improving CAR-T therapy and improving cancer cure rates.

For more than a decade, Carl June et al. analyzed the treatment of Doug Olson and Bill Ludwig, who received CD19-targeted CAR-T therapy in 2010, tracking their CAR-T cells and looking for any possible safety concerns.

More than a decade later, they can still detect the presence of the CAR-T cells infused that year, and the two patients still have no signs of leukemia. It is unclear whether the CAR-T cells killed all the leukemia cells shortly after infusion, or whether the CAR-T cells while circulating in the body, were able to eliminate the leukemia cells before they reached detectable levels.

Notably, both patients developed highly activated CD4+ T cell populations that dominated the later CAR-T cell population (over 95%). This transition is reflected in the stabilization of the CAR-T cell clonal composition, dominated by a small number of clones. Single-cell analysis showed that these long-lived CD4+ CAR-T cells exhibited cytotoxicity characteristics and sustained functional activation and proliferation. In addition, the initial response phase of one of the patients showed a γδ CAR-T cell population accompanied by a significant expansion of CD8+ CAR-T cells.

The identification and characterization of these unexpected CAR-T cell populations provide new insights into CAR-T cell signatures associated with anticancer response and long-term remission, the research team said.

Doug Olson, a healthcare worker, returned to medical diagnostics after a few years of CAR-T therapy, while he started exercising and running a half-marathon. He joked that he had been cured of cancer, but did not want to end up dying of a heart attack. In order to help more cancer patients, he chose to publish his story of cancer treatment and recovery, so that more cancer patients can see hope. He said: "It may not be possible to cure their cancer today, but it is possible that something good is about to happen.

Herb cistanche and Cistanche supplements improve cancer cure rates

Note： The traditional Chinese medicinal herb cistanche (also known as the "dragon herb" and "desert ginseng"), grows only in the arid and warm deserts. As one of the nine immortal herbs, Cistanche (cistanche tubulosa/cistanche deserticola/desertliving cistanche/cistanche salsa)contents with rich effective ingredients such as echinacoside, acteoside, total phenylethanoid glycosides, flavonoids, polysaccharides, etc. these effective ingredients made cistanche a precious nourishing herb and food material for people's immunity, internal organs, and brain cells and neurons, etc. The modern pharmacological studies have confirmed the following effects of cistanche(benefits of cistanche): improve immunity; improve sexual function and kidney function; anti-cancer; anti-fatigue; anti-aging; improve memory; anti-Parkinson's disease; anti-Alzheimer's disease; antioxidation; ease-constipation; anti-inflammatory; promote bone growth, whitening skin; protect liver; etc.

cistanche deserticola benefits：anti-cancer