On Aug. 30, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved what is believed to be a ground-breaking cancer treatment. This new form of treatment, CAR-T, is made by extracting a patient’s white blood cells and genetically “reprogramming” them to attack cancer cells. The blood cells are then placed back into the patient and multiply once they find cancer cells.

“New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine and create an inflection point in our ability to treat and even cure many intractable illnesses,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb from the FDA. Unlike conventional forms of cancer treatment such as surgery and chemotherapy, CAR-T is specifically catered to each patient, allowing for a higher chance for a successful treatment.

The treatment will be marketed under the name, Kymriah, and works against acute lymphoblastic leukemia. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Dr. Stephen Grupp of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who treated the first child with Kymriah. The child was close to death but has now been cancer-free for five years. Out of 63 patients treated with Kymriah, 83% were cancer-free within three months.

Although CAR-T treatments have shown promise against various other types of blood cancers, it has struggled to show results against solid-tumor cancers like lung cancer. “The results haven’t been that great when you compare it with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but I’m sure the technology will get better in the near future,” explained Dr. Prakash Satwani, a pediatric oncologist at Columbia University Medical.

Kymriah is now being offered at a starting price of $475,000. The developer company, Novartis, is currently working on a payment method that charges based upon how well the treatment works on the patient.

Kymriah is the first step in pioneering the “living drug” treatment and so far, there have been promising results. Many in the medical field are already calling CAR-T treatment a groundbreaking development and are counting on the continued success of the treatment.