CAR T-Cell Immunotherapy for Cancer

Seattle Children’s is an international leader in immunotherapy research.

We have chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell clinical trials for more types of childhood cancers including leukemia, lymphoma, brain and spinal cord tumors, and solid tumors than anywhere else. Our Cancer and Blood Disorders Center is one of the first in the world to offer CAR T-cell trials for children with diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG).

The clinical trials are developed by Seattle Children's Therapeutics. CAR T-cell products used in our trials are made onsite at our own state-of-the-art Therapeutics Cell Manufacturing facility. This means we can deliver treatments quickly to patients.

More than 500 children, teens and young adults have received CAR T-cell immunotherapy at Seattle Children’s and at our collaborating sites since 2012. 

Leukemia and lymphoma

• Our trials: PLAT

Brain and spinal cord tumors

• Our trials: BrainChild

Solid tumors

• Our trials: STRIvE and ENLIGHTen

Additional immunotherapy trials were developed at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

We focus on your whole child, not just their disease. At Seattle Children’s, your family has a full team behind you, taking care of your child’s medical, physical, learning, emotional and comfort needs. Patients and families involved in immunotherapy trials have the dedicated support of a social services specialist.

Contact Us

For more information on pediatric immunotherapy or referral information, call 206-987-2106 or send us an email.

How does CAR T-cell therapy work?

T cells are white blood cells in the immune system that fight infection. The goal with T-cell immunotherapy is to reprogram a child’s own T cells to seek out and destroy cancer cells wherever they are hiding in the body.

Here is how it works:

1. We do a procedure called apheresis to isolate the white blood cells from your child’s blood. This takes a few hours. We draw a blood sample from your child. This sample goes to a special part of Seattle Children’s Research Division called the Therapeutics Cell Manufacturing facility. Our lab staff remove the T cells from the sample, purify them and reprogram them. In this case, “reprogram” means to change the T cells by adding recombinant DNA (genetically modify them). Then, the newly programmed T cells multiply into millions of new cells.
2. The changed T cells are put back into your child’s body through an intravenous (IV) infusion.
3. The hope is that the changed cells will go to work right away, finding and destroying the cancer cells in your child’s body. The T cells make a place on their surface (a receptor) that acts like Velcro. This receptor allows the T cells to recognize and bind to a target on the cancer cells. When they bind, the T cells can attack the cancer cells as if they were fighting an infection.

The receptor that’s made on the T cells is called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). T cells that have the receptor may be called CAR T cells.

Learn how immunotherapy research at Seattle Children's is paving the way to become the next great advancement in cncer treatment. 

Meet the Experts

• Catherine (Katie) Albert, MD
• Colleen Annesley, MD
• Marie Bleakley, MD, PhD
• Todd Michael Cooper, DO
• Rebecca Gardner, MD
• Juliane Gust, MD
• Michael Jensen, MD
• Navin Pinto, MD
• Rebecca Ronsley, MD, FRCPC
• Corinne Summers, MD
• Nicholas Vitanza, MD