Cell therapy

Cell therapy uses living cells to prevent, manage, or cure disease. The cells may act directly, replace damaged tissue, or deliver therapeutic molecules.

Adoptive cell transfer: A treatment that collects, expands or modifies a patient's immune cells and returns them to fight disease. It exemplifies cell therapy in which transferred cells attack diseased cells.
Hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation: The transfer of blood-forming stem cells to restore hematopoiesis after disease or intensive treatment. It is a long-established application of therapeutic cell transfer.
Stem cell: An unspecialized cell capable of self-renewal and of producing one or more specialized cell types. Stem cells supply renewable starting material for many replacement therapies.
Organ transplantation: The surgical transfer of an organ from a donor or another site in the same body. It transfers an organized organ, whereas cell therapy administers cells or cell-based products.
Graft-versus-host disease: A condition in which donor immune cells attack the tissues of a transplant recipient. Donor-derived cell therapies can introduce immune cells that harm the recipient.
Chimeric antigen receptor T cell: A T cell engineered to recognize a chosen target through a synthetic antigen receptor. CAR T cells show how genetic modification can give therapeutic cells a new target.
CAR T-cell therapy: Cancer immunotherapy using a patient's T cells engineered to express chimeric antigen receptors. It has produced durable remissions in some blood cancers.
Cell differentiation: The process by which a cell acquires specialized structures and functions. Therapeutic products often require cells to reach a precise mature or progenitor state.
Tissue graft: A transplant of biological tissue, such as skin or cartilage, to repair or replace damaged tissue. A graft may contain living cells but is generally transferred as tissue rather than a cell product.
Tumorigenicity: The capacity of cells or tissues to form tumors. Uncontrolled growth is a major safety concern for therapies using proliferative or incompletely differentiated cells.

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