Cancer Research UK on The Rest Is Science

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells? That's immunotherapy. One type is CAR T-cell therapy. T-cells are your body's watchman, and doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer. They've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia. Because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells, they float around separately. And that makes it easier for CAR T cells to seek them out and destroy them. And now Cancer Research UK funded scientists are designing CAR T cells that can tackle solid tumors too, making them tougher so they can survive a more crowded and hostile cancer environment. Now, these approaches are experimental, but they do start to show where treatment might go next. And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK's pioneering work has helped to double cancer survival in the UK. I mean, this shows you how far research can take us. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash rest is science.