There Is a Magic Bullet for Some Cancers. What If It Misses?
CAR-T therapies were heralded as one-time cures for some dire cases. Many patients, it turns out, relapse over time after a complete remission.
A Novartis AG employee works in a research lab at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergShahzad Bhat, 53, was working at the MGM Mansion in Las Vegas when his doctor gave him three months to live in October 2017. There were no more treatments available for his aggressive form of lymphoma.
Like some of the elite gamblers who stayed at the casino, Bhat got lucky. A day before his appointment, an experimental cancer drug from Gilead Sciences Inc. had been approved in the U.S. Bhat become one of the first people to get the breakthrough therapy, Yescarta, after its approval, and his cancer went in remission quickly.
“It was a miracle,” said his wife, Nicole Bhat. “He was feeling fantastic. Thirty days out and we got a renewal on life.”