2023-04-24 18:20:00
Blood cancers are starting to spread in Belgium. The CAR-T CELLS treatment is increasingly present: it is used when chemotherapy is not effective. In Belgium, 4 hospitals use it with very promising results.
Jacques is 76 years old and in 2018, he was diagnosed with blood cancer and his doctor advised him to undergo chemotherapy treatment. “It lasted more or less a year and a half and then I had a relapse,” he explains. “There, the chemo no longer had any effects”.
He was then sent to the Saint-Luc university clinics to receive a new treatment, CAR T-CELLS therapy. “He was a patient who had an aggressive lymphoma, in refractory relapse like all patients in this case who come to us, but who was in very good general condition. This allowed us to consider this treatment at home” , explains Sarah Bailly, Deputy Head of Clinic in Hematology.
This process involves manipulation of the immune system. “The principle is to take immune cells from the patient, we will modify them in a lab, then we will reinject them into the patient so that the modified cells can kill the cancer”, explains Xavier Poiré, chief of clinic.
The process takes several weeks, but the injection only lasts a few hours. Then the modified cells will multiply in the patient’s body and remission is possible within a few months. “Three months later, the lymph nodes, the tumor masses have disappeared”.
Nearly one in two patients is receptive to this treatment. This is particularly the case for Jacques, who can take advantage of his retirement.
The treatment costs between 300 and 400,000 euros. In some cases, it is covered by mutual insurance.
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