Unlocking the promise of CAR-T
Health Unlocking the promise of CAR-T Alvin Powell Harvard Staff Writer June 30, 2025 long read Research across multiple fronts seeks to expand impact of a cancer therapy that has left patients and doctors awestruck David Avigan doesn’t like to use the word “miracle” to describe CAR-T-cell therapy, but he knows what people mean when they do. He also remembers the first time it happened with one of his patients. “As a field, we’re always a little cautious — our patients are on a roller coaster,” said Avigan, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess and the Theodore W. and Evelyn G. Berenson Professor of Medicine for the Study of Oncology at Harvard Medical School. “But frankly, we’ve seen very dramatic responses in patients with advanced disease.” First approved by the FDA in 2017, CAR-T-cell therapy enlists the body’s immune system in the fight against cancer. It has triggered rapid improvement in some of the sickest patients,...