Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C4L-mmcrixL/ Injecting a herd of a patient’s own white cells known to kill that patient’s malignant skin cancer is effective court-of-last-resort therapy for advanced melanoma resistant to other treatments.  A multi-site study of 153 with such tumors showed that this treatment known as TIL or Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes induced significant tumor regression in 31% of patients, complete elimination of detectable tumor in 5%, and continuing tumor control at 18 months in 42%. In response to these exciting results, the FDA has approved the use of this therapy, marketed as Amtagvi with lifileucel as the generic by Iovance Biotherapeutics,  Amtagvi is not a drug but rather a process.  A patient’s persistent or recurrent melanoma is surgically excised and so-called tumor infiltrating lymphocytes or TILs are harvested from the tumor.  These immune T lymphocytes are then grown outside the body into a battalion uniquely capable of killing that patient’s tumor.  The patient rec