There’s a new technique that may revolutionize one type of T cell therapy, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Maybe you've heard of CAR T cells, a type of cell you have in your body that is supercharged

in the lab and put back in to fight things like cancer.

Biomedical engineering expert Jordan Greene at Johns Hopkins and colleagues have developed

a new way to stimulate T cells inside the body.

CAR T therapy is a way that cells can be engineered typically outside the body using viruses.

The process takes time and is very expensive, but then the outcomes can be transformative

where these engineered cells are able to treat cancer and increasing number of diseases

in new ways.

What we're doing is side-stepping all of that cellular manufacturing to instead develop

a new type of biodegradable particle that dissolves in water that could be injected and

then does all of that same engineering in the body.

Greene says this particle may enable specialized T cell therapy to reach many more people.

At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.