The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre is one of the small number of hospitals in England to offer an innovative form of immunotherapy called CAR T-cell therapy (also known as CAR-T). We have been offering this treatment since the end of 2024. Before then, patients had to travel to other parts of England for CAR-T treatment.
Here, Sharon Smith, who was one of the last patients to have to travel elsewhere for CAR-T treatment, shares her story and explains why she is so delighted that this treatment is now available in Cheshire and Merseyside.
When Sharon Smith went to A&E in April 2023 with an agonising pain in her chest, the last thing she ever expected was to be diagnosed with an acute form of leukaemia.
“It came as a complete shock,” says Sharon, from Croxteth in Liverpool. “I had no symptoms at all. We’d just come back from holiday where I’d walked the length of Spain and I’d been playing football in the garden with my little grandson the night before I got this pain.”
Blood tests and a bone marrow biopsy showed that Sharon had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). It’s a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow, usually develops very quickly and needs to be treated straight away.
Sharon was referred to The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool and began her treatment, initially with chemotherapy to kill the cancer cells. Then in November 2023 she had a stem cell transplant from a donor to help her create healthy new blood cells and reduce the risk of the cancer returning.
“I felt really good after the stem cell transplant,” recalls Sharon, who lives with husband, Paul, and has two sons and a grandson. “I’ve always been on the go, really active and busy, and I felt like my usual self again.
“I was still coming for regular check-ups at Clatterbridge and, in September 2024, my routine bone marrow biopsy showed I had relapsed and the cancer was back. I just wasn’t expecting it so, as you can imagine, I was completely shocked.
“That was a Tuesday and I went home thinking this was the end for me, then on the Friday I got a lovely phone call from the consultant, Dr Saif, to say he’d been working behind the scenes to try and find another treatment for me and I’d been accepted for CAR-T therapy.
“I went from literally the worst time in life to feeling like I’d just won the lottery because there was a little bit of hope there.”
CAR-T therapy – chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy – is a highly innovative form of immunotherapy. It involves removing T immune cells from a patient’s blood and modifying them to become CAR-T cells that are then transplanted back into the patient. The CAR-T cells can recognise a specific protein on cancer cells and attach to it, allowing them to attack the cancer.
Although Sharon knew CAR-T therapy was likely to be available in Liverpool by the end of 2024, her consultants advised her it wouldn’t be safe to wait. She needed treatment as soon as possible so she was referred to The Christie in Manchester.
“It would have been amazing if I could have had it in Liverpool but obviously they weren’t starting it here until a few weeks later. I did ask Dr Saif if I could wait and have it here but he explained I needed it sooner than that.
“The treatment was great but travelling to Manchester was just exhausting. We were over and back about 20 times in all for consultations, cell collection, chemotherapy, infusion and follow-up appointments afterwards.
“It’s a long day because I had to be there for 9am so that meant getting up very early, leaving home at 7am, having my appointment, blood tests, waiting for results and so on. I was so tired I’d sleep for hours afterwards. It really wipes you out and it’s hard on your family members as well.”
As well as making regular trips to and from Manchester as a day patient, she also had to stay in Manchester for about three and a half weeks during the most intensive stage of treatment.
Every CAR-T treatment is unique to that patient because it uses their own T cells and the process takes several weeks. Sharon had to go to Manchester to have T cells taken from her blood. The cells were taken to a specialist pharmaceutical laboratory to be transformed into her CAR-T treatment.
Then she had chemotherapy treatment in Manchester to prepare her body for the CAR-T. Finally, she was admitted to hospital in Manchester to be given her CAR-T therapy and monitored closely afterwards.
As CAR-T is so intensive, it can have serious side-effects for the first few days and weeks as people respond to the treatment. Patients have to stay in or close to their CAR-T centre for around a month, and can’t drive for eight weeks after treatment.
Sharon did experience these known side-effects but recovered quickly and is now feeling fantastic again. Her bone marrow biopsies and blood tests are looking good and she is hopeful for what the future will bring.
Sharon said:
I’m just so delighted that CAR-T therapy is now available in Liverpool so people like me no longer have to travel as far for it. CAR-T treatment is fantastic and something I’d really recommend but the travel was very tiring.
The team at Clatterbridge are just amazing – I can’t praise them enough – and it will make a world of difference for people to be able to have this treatment so much closer to home.
Consultant Haemato-Oncologist Dr Muhammad Saif, who is Director of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, is one of the doctors who has been leading Sharon’s care.
Dr Saif said:
It has been wonderful to see Sharon looking so well after her treatment. CAR-T has shown remarkable results for many patients across the world so we are delighted we can now deliver it here at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, saving patients from having to make long journeys to other areas.
