Sign In
Learn bits
Science & Tech.
Mahesh

29/10/22 22:31 PM IST

Homegrown CAR-T cells 'cure' 8-year-old's leukemia

In News 
  • The eight-year-old got the treatment as part of the safety trials for India’s first indigenously made CAR-T cells — a joint effort between IIT-Bombay and Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai.
CAR-T cells therapy 
  • It is a type of treatment in which a patient’s T cells (a type of immune cell) are changed in the laboratory so they will bind to cancer cells and kill them.
  • CAR-T cells are a new form of, immunotherapy, itself a fledgling branch of cancer treatment.
  • It entails re-engineering the body’s T immune cells with some genetic material so that they selectively target cancer cells for destruction.
  • In this therapy, Blood from a vein in the patient’s arm flows through a tube to an apheresis machine (not shown), which removes the white blood cells, including the T cells, and sends the rest of the blood back to the patient.
  • Then, the gene for a special receptor called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) is inserted into the T cells in the laboratory.
  • Millions of CAR T cells are grown in the laboratory and then given to the patient by infusion. The CAR T cells are able to bind to an antigen on the cancer cells and kill them.
Source- Times of India 

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 May

Key objectives of caste count

'The Union Cabinet has decided that the next Census will include questions on caste to its enumeration of India’s population, for the first time in almost a century. ' T

Read More

05 May

2 new genome-edited rice varieties

'Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan recently released two genome-edited varieties of rice, the first achievement of its kind in the country.' These two varieties, which

Read More

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps