One thing I didn’t really see mentioned here is length of treatment. They have to collect patients sample at hospital or other facility, transport to production facility, grow sample, inject sample with vector, grow some more and then reintroduce. The real sci-fi moment will be when they get to the point they can treat in a day.
I think most are 3+ weeks sample to treatment right now. Still amazing though.
How do you imagine that would work?
Some closed-pipeline machine that lives in the hospital and automates sample → modified sample culture cycle?
Or something stranger, e.g. some kind of injectable (maybe prokaryotic?) cells that actively swim around looking for L-lymphocytes to vectorize through bacterial horizontal gene transfer — such that the whole process happens in vivo?
That's already a thing, for example Lonza's Cocoon platform or Miltenyi's Prodigy (both are often used for on-site manufacturing).
That being said, you're directionally correct and certainly, shorter duration immunotherapies represent a sea change.