Introducing TIL Therapy

When immunotherapy and targeted therapy stop working, the care team considers what comes next. Medical oncologist James Smithy, MD, MHS, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center explains how care teams think about next steps in advanced melanoma, with a focus on achieving long-lasting disease control. Dr Smithy gives an accessible overview of tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, an FDA-approved cellular therapy in which a person's own T cells are collected from a tumor, grown in a lab into billions of cells, and given back after short-course chemotherapy with fludarabine and cyclophosphamide to prepare the body. He walks through the full treatment arc, including up to 6 doses of interleukin-2 (IL-2) to help the new T cells expand and work. He also explains what terms like objective response rate, which was roughly 30% to 35% in the pivotal trial, and partial versus complete response actually mean for someone considering treatment.