Hawaii cancer patients can now get an advanced immune-based treatment at home instead of flying to the mainland — good news for people with hard-to-treat blood cancers.

• CAR T therapy takes a patient's own immune cells, changes them in a lab, and puts them back in to attack cancer.
• Unlike chemo, it targets cancer cells directly, so patients avoid the usual hair loss and nausea.
• Hawaii Pacific Health has treated close to 30 patients since 2022, and gives the cells in an outpatient clinic so people go home the same day.
• For now it is only approved for leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma after other treatments have failed.
• Oncologist Stephanie C. Lim is also researching how immune systems differ across races and ethnicities, which matters for Hawaii's mixed population.

Outlook: Thousands of trials are underway, and CAR T is expected to reach breast, lung, and prostate cancer within five years.