Unlike chemotherapy or radiation, which attack cancer directly, CAR-T engineers patients’ immune cells so they can do it themselves. T-cells are removed from the blood and given new genes that produce receptors that let the T-cells recognize and bind to leukemia cells with a specific protein, CD19.

The genetically modified T-cells are then multiplied in the lab and infused back into the patient, where they ideally multiply even further and begin to target and kill cancer cells with CD19.