[Editor's Note] Cellular immunotherapy is an emerging cancer treatment technology, but the cellular immunotherapy industry is an embarrassing industry! This industry has developed for twenty years, witnessing it from its rise to popularity, to the suspension due to the "Wei Zexi Incident", and then to the orderly guidance of the state, although stumbling but still moving forward. Last year, in the public opinion incident in which Dr. Zhang Yu of the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University exposed the "chaos of tumor treatment", cellular immunotherapy once again aroused public concern.
It, in the field of tumor treatment, has actually become a topic star of "bringing its own traffic".
By chance, Dr. Zhang Yu of the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University left us several questions in the background. Professor Zhang Minghui of Tsinghua University School of Medicine hopes to take this opportunity to sincerely unveil the veil of cell therapy technology and show you an objective and real world.
Dr. Zhang Yu: Hello!
We are glad that you followed our team.
Last year's incident, you carried a lot of burdens alone, but also resisted the huge pressure. Your cry is a manifestation of the medical conscience. We who are engaged in the cell therapy industry have also been paying continuous attention and thinking:
What are the profound reasons for this phenomenon?
——What principles should we uphold to view and engage in cancer immunotherapy?
How can patients who cannot benefit from conventional medical treatment get hope for survival?
We must do research, in-depth understanding of the industry's technology and medical status, frank dialogue and communication, in-depth thinking in order to sort out the truth of the matter, in order to eliminate each other's information difference, will not cause misunderstanding. Your attention gives us the opportunity to explore professionalism and in-depth understanding.
Immune cell therapy is a complex medical technology with a history of nearly 40 years, and its systemic complexity and application far exceed that of general cancer treatment drugs. In the decades of development of individualized technology, many patients at home and abroad have benefited from it, so that the medical community and the public can see the hope of the future, which will become the hot spot of current medical treatment.
Due to insufficient understanding of technical complexity, the domestic cell therapy industry is a very embarrassing industry. In the more than thirty years of domestic immunotherapy development, it has experienced chaos, included in medical insurance, and then stopped, and is now moving towards reasonable and orderly, it is really a twist and turn, and the road is still tortuous and long. In the process of development, some people also have insufficient cognition, blind commercialization, and turn the medical road into a commercial road, harming the interests of patients, and also bringing stigma to the industry and making doctors bear the infamy.
Immune cell types are also specialized and complex, and you misinterpreted NK as NKT at the events of last May. NKT is a niche in immunology research, and our team has been studying subgroups since 2004. In 2010, clinical research was carried out with the support of the National Major New Drug Creation Program.
We have investigator-initiated clinical trials of patient recruitment, and strict screening is placed in the population after conventional treatment (still high risk after conventional treatment/ uncontrolled by conventional treatment / intolerable with conventional treatment). There are state-funded free clinical trials of single diseases (melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer), and there are also foundations that partially support expand clinical research with patients. The complexity of cell therapy determines that the clinical research model is also different from the chemical drug clinic.
All of our presentations are real cases after 1, 3, 5 years of treatment. Our clinical cases are followed up for long periods of time and have undergone rigorous medical evaluation to determine efficacy and durability. Many cases of recurrent metastasis have survived more than 5 years without tumors through NKT alone (the longest case of extensive lung metastasis after gastric cancer surgery, tumor-free survival time has exceeded 10 years).
The evaluation of immunotherapy is also different from the evaluation of the efficacy of chemical drugs, and the medical community is also accumulating experience to form a consensus.
Picture note: WeChat public account Zhang Minghui talks about immunity and new medicine, and the treatment case display interface
Our team's clinical research adheres to the joint decision-making of doctors and patients, promotes technology and humanities, and patients participate in clinical research as part of the team. You are welcome to participate in our team's doctor-patient exchanges, and communicate and dialogue with patients, to have a more thorough understanding of technology and efficacy, and to understand our team's medical humanities.
Medical technology is pure, social and medical is complex. What we expect to improve is the human heart and good medical order, not to stigmatize technology.
We sincerely invite you to visit and guide with a critical eye!
Minghui Zhang, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University