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- CAR-T cell therapy for hematologic cancers is now available at St. George Regional Hospital.
- Jacqueline, a Las Vegas patient who traveled to Salt Lake City for the treatment, said it saved her life.
- Dr. Brad Hunter said he is grateful to bring the remarkably successful treatment closer to patients in southern Utah and nearby states.
ST. GEORGE — Cancer patients living in southern Utah and nearby states now have a facility offering a highly specialized treatment, much closer to home.
Jacqueline, 68, lives in Las Vegas and says the CAR-T stem cell treatment she received at LDS Hospital saved her life — but she had to travel more than 400 miles to Salt Lake City to get the treatment for her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
"It was really miraculous," Jacqueline said in a news release from Intermountain. "I could see the back of my throat and see the lymph nodes so swelled up, and then within two weeks of the treatment, suddenly, they were just gone. They even scanned me, and everything was gone."
Jacqueline, who is referred to by her first name only in the release, says she traveled to Salt Lake City multiple times over the course of her treatment, staying for a month each time.
Now, that same therapy is available at St. George Regional Hospital's Cancer Center, which Jacqueline said is "just down the street" from her.
CAR-T cell therapy, also known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, uses a patient's own immune system to fight their cancer. The therapy is customized to each patient, with doctors collecting the patient's T cells and reengineering them to target and destroy cancer cells by binding proteins or antigens to the cancer cell.
The FDA has approved CAR-T cell therapy for patients with many hematologic cancers, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia, B-cell lymphomas and multiple myeloma.
Intermountain says it is the first company in the country to bring the stem cell therapy outside of a primary treatment center to a regional clinic. Dr. Brad Hunter, director of the CAR T-cell program at LDS Hospital, says it will significantly improve access to quality care for patients in southern Utah and nearby states.
"Expanding CAR-T cell therapy to Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital is a testament to our commitment to providing accessible, state-of-the-art cancer treatment," he said in the release.
Hunter said the therapy has had "remarkable success," and Intermountain is grateful for the opportunity to make it more accessible.
Once doctors confirm that the treatment is working, patients at the St. George Cancer Center will be sent home for further follow-up appointments closer to where they live.
