How does TIL therapy differ from CAR T-cell therapy?

CAR T-cell therapy  is another innovative cell therapy offered at UChicago Medicine. Like TIL therapy, CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy uses your body’s immune cells to fight cancer. However, CAR T-cell therapy uses T cells from your blood, not from your tumor. Then, new T cells re-engineered in a laboratory to seek out a specific “target” on a tumor.

Unlike CAR T-cell therapy, TIL therapy uses T cells that have already invaded your tumor. Different populations of TILs may work in different ways against the tumor, rather than focusing on a single target like with CAR T-cell therapy. TIL therapy can harness multiple populations of TILs that already “recognize” your cancer, grow billions more in a lab and then send them back into your body in an “activated” state to shrink your tumor.