Now 18, the first child to ever receive CAR-T cancer therapy is ready for a new identity
The Food and Drug Administration approves dozens of cancer drugs every year, but the vast majority of them offer gradual improvements. A treatment might shrink tumors in a third of patients, or extend survival by a couple months, and a company can still haul in billions.
The results were much more revolutionary when, at six years old, Emily Whitehead became the first child to receive CAR-T cell therapy, in which researchers arm a patient’s own immune cells against their cancer. Whitehead’s therapy almost killed her, but it successfully killed her cancer, paving the way for the approach to become widely available.
