31 August 2017 - On Wednesday, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis made history as the first company to win FDA approval for a groundbreaking new type of cancer treatment known as CAR-T. 

This technology harnesses the power of patients' very immune cells—which are extracted from them, reengineered in a lab, and then pumped back into the body—to kill aggressive blood cancers. The treatment, named Kymriah, was hailed by doctors and the life sciences community as a major advance in medicine and a boon to children and young adults with a certain form of leukaemia (the group for whom the gene therapy is approved). The FDA itself called the approval a "historic action."

"It's really transformative," as Dr. Kevin J. Curran, a paediatric oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told Fortune in an interview. "It's shown a massive response rate in people with these cancers. It's given hope to patients and parents. If other treatments fail, we can tell them, we have this new weapon in our arsenal that teaches your cells to fight cancer."

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