Scientists reprogram immune cells inside the body to fight cancer

CAR-T cell therapy has transformed the treatment of certain blood cancers, but getting the therapy to patients remains complicated, expensive, and slow. The standard process requires doctors to collect a patient's immune cells and send them to a specialized facility, where the cells are genetically modified to recognize cancer. The engineered cells are then shipped back and infused into the patient. The entire process can take weeks and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Researchers at UC San Francisco have now developed a potential alternative that could allow those cancer-fighting cells to be reprogrammed directly inside the body. If the approach can be translated to people, it could remove much of the manufacturing, expense, and delay that currently limits access to CAR-T therapy.