Scanning electron microscope image of dendritic cells (green), interacting with T cells, (pink).
Credit: Victor Segura Ibarra and Rita Serda, Ph.D., NCI, NIH.
A Vision for the Future
Cell-based therapies have been successful in treating some patients with metastatic melanoma, as well as certain types of lymphomas and leukemias. There are also promising preliminary results treating patients with colon cancer, breast cancer and cholangiocarcinoma. The foundation for developing treatments for the most commonly occurring cancers has been created and the work is ongoing.
We seek to develop highly personalized cell-based treatments that target individual mutations within a patient’s tumors. This will give new hope to the hundreds of thousands of patients with many types of cancer.
Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg with a patient at the NIH Clinical Center.
An additional long-term goal is to facilitate inter-institute collaborations to develop cell-based treatments for other disorders, diseases and injuries such as:
- Infectious diseases (eg HIV/AIDS)
- Monogenic disorders (eg Hemophilia, Sickle-cell anemia).
- Autoimmunity (eg. Diabetes)
- Spinal Cord Injury and Neurological Diseases (eg. Parkinson’s disease)