Immunotherapies have revolutionized the fight against cancer. Broadly speaking, they are treatments that stimulate our body's defenses to recognize and attack tumor cells. CAR-T (car-T) therapychimeric antigen receptor-T) is a very innovative type of immunotherapy through which adrugwith the patient's own cells: white blood cells (T lymphocytes) are extracted, genetically reprogrammed in the laboratory to recognize tumor cells, and then reinfused to neutralize the cancer. This approach has already proven successful with some types of blood cancer, but access is limited because they are complex and expensive therapies, as highly specialized medical equipment is required to generate the cells outside the patient's body. Now, American researchers have developed a new strategy in a study to generate these cells directly within the body, opening the door to making this type of therapy more accessible in the future.

In 2017, professionals at the Hospital Clínic performed the first infusion of a CAR-T treatment (from the Englishchimeric antigen receptor-T), a cell therapy that has already revolutionized the approach to some types of cancer. It consists of creating a drug with the patient's own cells: the white blood cells (T lymphocytes) are extracted, genetically reprogrammed in the laboratory to recognize tumor cells, and then reinfused to neutralize the cancer. Since then, the hospital has treated more than 500 patients with this type of immune therapy and has managed to eliminate the cancer in half of these cases. In this way, it has become a benchmark in Europe, being the only one to have developed two exclusively academic therapies that are already approved in Spain:Ari-0001, for severe patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and theAri-0002h, for patients with multiple myeloma.