Surgery can be curative when a solid tumor cancer has not spread. However, it is often very difficult for surgeons to discern where a tumor ends and healthy tissue begins. Thus, for many types of cancer, post-surgical recurrence due to remaining microscopic tumor cells is common. One possible approach to this problem is to apply anti-tumor therapy to the remaining tissue margins immediately after tumor removal, to kill any remaining tumor cells. According to one study, researchers tested this approach using CAR T cells. They applied a special gel containing human CAR T cells to surgical wounds in mice after partial tumor removal. They found that in almost all cases, the CAR T cells apparently eliminated residual tumor cells, allowing the mice to survive when they would otherwise have succumbed to tumor recurrence.
