Researchers at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center are at the forefront of a new approach to cancer treatment, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. The little-known but highly promising technology breakthrough makes it possible for a patient’s own body to fight cancer, often without invasive surgery, offering them new hope for the possibility of long-term remission.
Researchers at Roswell Park Help Patients Overcome Life-Threatening Illness Through Groundbreaking Treatment.
However, a new survey by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center of 1,021 adults in the United States shows 65% are unfamiliar with the personalized cancer treatment option.*
Fourteen years after he was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma, 70-year-old Chris Vogelsang knew his cancer could return. Even though he underwent several rounds and types of treatments, including a stem cell transplant, his cancer returned twice.
“My energy level was terrible. I was losing weight and had night sweats,” said Vogelsang.
“It was the sense of how are we going to treat this?
“It turned out that I was 90% involved with lymphoma cells in my bone marrow, which is pretty significant. I asked ‘What do I have to do to get through it so I can get on with my life?’”
In 2022, his care team at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center presented CAR T-cell therapy as an option.
“As is oftentimes the case with these sometimes very stubborn and refractory types of cancer, the options became increasingly limited,” said Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chair of Medicine for the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“CAR T-cell therapy is a massive paradigm change of how we view and think of cancers and how we treat those cancers,” he added.
Brentjens is one of the developers of CAR T-cell therapy and has built a team of leading scientists, engineers, oncologists, and nurses dedicated to advancing these treatments, improving their safety and efficacy, and making them more widely available.
“When I see patients in the clinic, I ask myself, ‘What do I have available that can cure them of their disease?’” said Marco Davila, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Associate Director for Translational Research at Roswell Park.
“These patients have typically gone through a lot, and the upside of CAR T-cell therapy is that they can potentially get cured and go back to their lives as a father, a mother, a student—and that, to me, is just amazing,” Davilla noted.
What is CAR T-cell Therapy
CAR T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own T-cells to fight cancer. In this process, T-cells are extracted from the blood and sent to a laboratory where they are genetically modified to produce ‘chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) on their surface.
After this process is completed, the ‘new’ CAR T-cells, which are now able to recognize and attack cancer cells, multiply and are then returned to patients via IV infusion. [1]
“It’s a one-shot deal. It’s not cycles of chemotherapy, it’s not rounds X, Y, or Z. It’s a single infusion. And then hopefully we’re done,” Brentjes explained.
The cells are processed in Roswell Park’s newly expanded Good Manufacturing Practice Engineering & Cell Manufacturing Facility (GEM), one of the largest facilities of its kind in the United States. It contains 20 sterile rooms across two buildings, marking a transformative step for cancer research and treatment.
“This facility helps to speed up the process, with fewer obstacles in terms of getting these cells produced and getting them into patients,” Davila explained.
“Our goal is to reach a day soon where a patient with any type of cancer can have an investigational cell and gene therapy available directly,” he added.
Encouraging Results
The results of CAR T-cell therapy so far have been encouraging, with more than half of patients with lymphoma achieving remission. In certain types of leukemia, the remission rate reaches an impressive 90 percent. [2]
Vogelsang’s scans have not shown signs of cancer in his system since March 2023. CAR T-cell therapy has granted him valuable years to enjoy with his wife, Karen, and their growing family, which will soon include 10 grandchildren. Chris has also been able to return to the tennis courts, where he plays weekly with friends.
“I feel great, and I’m back to the life that I knew before,” Vogelsang said.
“To have doctors and scientists who can develop therapies is beyond words. There are people who will walk into Roswell Park today and get a diagnosis. If they know CAR T-cell therapy is available for their cancer and they know that the results have been great, it offers them hope, along with their families and friends,” he commented.
As of now, CAR T-cell therapy is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only for certain types of blood cancer, but scientists hope it will one day treat solid tumor cancers as well.
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Note: * The survey was conducted online within the United States by Ipsos on the KnowledgePanel® from March 14 to 16, 2025, and surveyed 1,021 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults.
Reference
[1] CAR T-cell Therapy and Its Side Effects. American Cancer Society. Online. Last accessed on April 16, 2025.
[2] Wang L, Zhang L, Dunmall LC, Wang YY, Fan Z, Cheng Z, Wang Y. The dilemmas and possible solutions for CAR-T cell therapy application in solid tumors. Cancer Lett. 2024 Jun 1;591:216871. doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2024.216871. Epub 2024 Apr 10. PMID: 38604310.
Featured image: CAR T-cell therapy involves collecting a patient’s immune cells and engineering them to recognize and destroy cancer cells before returning them to the body through an IV infusion. This process takes place at the Roswell Park GMP Engineering & Cell Manufacturing Facility (GEM), one of the largest of its kind in the United States. Photo courtesy © 2025 Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Used with permission.
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