University of Louisville (Ky.) Hospital will now offer the region's first CAR T-Cell therapy program for cancer patients thanks to a $1 million donation from a Louisville resident, according to local NBC affiliate WAVE 3 News.
Tom Dunbar, the donor, lost his 6-year-old son to cancer in 2001.
Through the new program, clinicians and researchers at the hospital's James Graham Brown Cancer Center will develop the T-cell therapies, which use patients' own genetically engineered immune cells to fight cancer. The cells will then be sent to children and adults across the country.
"A huge percentage of those patients can have long-term durable responses remissions," Kelly McMasters, MD, department of surgery chair at University of Louisville Hospital, told WAVE 3 News. "We hesitate to use the word cure, but that's what it is, for things that were incurable."
Dr. McMasters added that the program will improve access to cancer treatment, so patients no longer have to travel to other major cities for care.