Henry Ford Health System in Detroit is giving some patients a new option to fight cancer: CAR T-cell therapy.
The Henry Ford Cancer Institute is now certified to administer the therapy, which uses patients' own genetically engineered immune cells to fight cancer.
A southeastern Michigan woman recently became the health system's first patient to receive CAR T-cell therapy, which is approved for patients with B-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
"When patients are told 'nothing else can be done,' and they hear that CAR T-cell therapy may be an option, they are going to be very excited," Edward Peres, MD, medical director of the Henry Ford Cancer Institute's CAR T-cell program, said in a press release. "Without this therapy, patient survival [for these cancers] would be less than 10 percent."