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7th Period
11/3/16
Independent Study: Track Hours
This source was about 18 pages in size 8 font and was filled scientific terms and text that
was confusing in some areas. The text contained lots of detailed information and made
use of many acronyms that I am unfamiliar with.
Source Number Letter: Source J
Citation: D
avila, M. L., Riviere, I., Wang, X., Bartido, S., Park, J., Curran, K., ... & Qu, J.
(2014). Efficacy and toxicity management of 19-28z CAR T cell therapy in B cell acute
lymphoblastic leukemia. Science translational medicine, 6(224), 224ra25-224ra25.
Source Validation: S
ource is published in the scientific journal Nature and written by
multiple PhD scientists.
How did you find this source?: Through the use of Google Scholar
Intended audience: Other scientists studying in the field.
What arguments/topics does this source discuss?: T
his article discusses the
effectiveness of B-cells in targeting acute b-cell lymphoma. The article talks about how it
was done through the use of T-cells engineered with the CAR CD19 antigen. The source
then goes on to discuss the results. These results for the main part were highly
successful in patients with the Philadelphia Chromosome. The article discusses
different hypothesis of why this particular disease worked so well with the CAR
engineered T-cells. Finally, the article discusses what came out of this trial on humans
as the researchers are now able to make a roadmap for clinics considering the use of
T-cell therapy.
Minimum 3 quotes, paraphrases, summaries of source text that seem likely to be
helpful in future writing:
T cell therapy with tumor-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)modified T cells has
recently transitioned from the laboratory to the clinic and yielded outcomes that support
the tremendous potential of this approach to cancer therapy
CARs are artificial receptors that redirect antigen specificity, activate T cells, and further
enhance T cell function through their costimulatory component (4, 5). Three groups,
including our own, have reported objective tumor responses when infusing autologous T
cells genetically modified with CD19-targeted CARs into patients with chronic
lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and other indolent non-Hodgkins lymphomas
CAR-engineered T cells can induce in some patients a clinical syndrome of fevers,
hypotension, hypoxia, and neurologic changes associated with marked elevations of
serum cytokines (1
3). This spectrum of clinical and laboratory findings has been termed
a CRS, which, given the anecdotal nature of this phenomenon, has remained largely
undefined
Reflection
This source was about 12 pages and gave information over the targeting of b-cell
lymphomas using gene therapy. The promising results show immunotherapy may lead to
many new breakthroughs. It took me about three hours to completely finish reading this
article and analyze its contents as it also contained many detailed diagrams that were
hard to understand..
Reflection
This article was 8 pages and detailed over the use of CAR based immunotherapy for
neuroblastoma. Like every other article that Ive read, it is filled with academic
vocabulary and acronyms that I have never heard of. This slows down the reading
process and makes it so that I have to spend significantly more time to read. Overall it
took me about two hours to read through this article.
Reflection
In doing independent research once again, I was of course the only person that worked on my
track work. I read three scholarly articles this time instead of four as the first two articles that I
read were considerably longer than usual. The articles were published by phD professors and
researchers in various scientific fields. The articles that I read through took me about eight
hours collectively to read through and analyze as a whole. For my eight track hours this time I
focused heavily in doing more research into the use of immunotherapy in treating cancer. To
start off, I learned considerably more about how immunotherapy works as a whole. This
technology essentially works by engineering t-cells, the body's natural immune cell for targeting
disease, and giving them the ability to recognize cancer cells. Normally your body is not able to
kill them due to the fact that cancer cells are able to disguise themselves as normal functioning
body cells. Although for my last 8 track hours I read about many of the same things, this time I
was able to delve more deeply into the application and results from human trials. Specifically I
read about many applications on lymphomas and neuroblastomas . All of the experiments that I
read about resulted in success and allowed for the patients to see significant success in relapse
of the disease. This occurred for most of the experiments and meant that great promise for even
more future research is on the horizon. I also learned a lot more about the obstacles that still
remain in the way of successfully allowing CAR assisted immunotherapy to work. One of the
biggest issues is the problem that comes from a process known as antigen escape. This
process works similarly to something which could be compared to as the natural selection of
antigens. Because CAR immunotherapy targets a specific antigen and due to the fact that
cancer mutates heavily resulting in great variation. It is possible that a specific antigen is
targeted and all carcinogenic cells with that antigen are killed, however other cancer cells
without that antigen are able to live. Not only that, there is the huge issue of specificity.
Sometimes the mutated t-cells are not designed correctly so the process is very costly and
expensive in order to achieve a desired result. I discussed with my mentor very heavily about
this topic as this is his main focus of research. He gave me a picture of the current state of
things concerning CAR immunotherapy and how the future looks. As of now many antigens
have already been established as very effective for destroying certain types of liquid
lymphomas. A battle of patent wars is ongoing as companies attempt to patent antigen designs.
I was able to accomplish this research in the comfort of my own house in front of my desktop
computer. All of the research that I did for these eight track hours came over the course of a two
week period as I analyzed and slowly read the articles very carefully. I chose to do independent
research as I felt that it was the best option that I had to accomplish my track work for capstone.
Not only that, I really didnt have another feasible option as a backup as there is no way I could
do product creation and internships are not available to me at the time.