New Improved Infusions

CAR T therapy, in which a patient’s (or a donor’s) T cells are reprogrammed to attack cancer cells, has revolutionised the treatment of blood cancers. But the benefits don’t always last because the cells themselves sometimes don’t. Research in animals indicates that if, prior to infusion, the cells are enriched for T memory stem cells, which have an inherent self-renewal capacity, they last longer and perform better. Sure enough, a recent first-in-human trial confirmed stem-enriched CAR T cells outshone standard cells, persisting in the body and improving clinical outcomes. The images above are PET-CT scans of a leukaemia patient before (left), thirteen days after (middle) and ninety-four days after (right) transfusion with the enriched cells and show a striking reduction in bone lesions (green signals in the vertebrae and legs). While this cell preparation takes longer, the results suggest its worth the effort, offering more consistent and persistent clinical benefits.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Luca Gattinoni and Gabriele Inchingolo, and colleagues
• Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy, Regensburg, Germany; Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Cell, April 2026