The US Food and Drug Administration is requiring that manufacturers of a cancer therapy called CAR-T include a bold warning on the packaging that the treatment itself can cause cancer.
That said, ""the overall benefits of these products continue to outweigh their potential risks," FDA spokesperson Carly Kempler said.
From NBC News:
The agency's decision to update the labels was based on reportsof rare blood cancers in patients who had previously gotten CAR-T therapy, Kempler said. As of Monday, the agency had received 25 reports of the blood cancers in CAR-T patients, she said[…]
CAR-T — or chimeric antigen receptor T cell — therapy uses a patient's own immune cells to treat certain blood cancers, such as leukemia, multiple myeloma and lymphoma. It involves harvesting the immune cells — in this case, T cells — then genetically altering them in a lab to make them target cancer cells, and finally reinfusing them back into the patient.
