Hematology Frontier

With the aging population, the demand for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) among elderly patients with hematologic malignancies is growing, yet clinical decision-making faces increasingly complex challenges. In the process…

In the global wave of medical innovation, emerging therapies such as CAR-T cell therapy have brought revolutionary hope for major diseases, including malignancies. However, their widespread adoption and application face significant regional imbalances, with low- and middle-income countries encountering numerous structural barriers in accessing these frontier technologies. From November 13 to 16, 2025, the 2025 International Conference on Cell and Immunotherapy (CTI 2025) was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. During the conference, Oncology Frontier - Hematology specially invited Professor Alejandro Madrigal from University College London (UCL) to discuss, from an international perspective and using Mexico as a case study, the core challenges Latin America faces in promoting equitable access to medical resources and introducing cutting-edge therapies. 

In today’s rapidly evolving biomedical landscape, cell therapy has emerged as a major breakthrough direction and a focal point of global scientific inquiry. Against this backdrop, during the 2025 International Cell and Immunotherapy Congress (CTI 2025), Professor Shanshan Pei of Liangzhu Laboratory and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine engaged in a scholarly dialogue with Dr. João Monteiro, Editor-in-Chief of Nature Medicine. 

To promote innovation in China’s cell and immunotherapy fields, deepen discussions on key scientific questions, share the latest clinical advancements, and foster global collaboration and clinical translation, the 2025 International Cell & Immunotherapy Conference (CTI 2025) was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, from November 13–16, 2025. The conference was jointly organized by Zhejiang University, the International Academy for Clinical Hematology (IACH), the Zhejiang Society of Immunology, and the Zhejiang Anti-Cancer Association, and was co-hosted by the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine and Liangzhu Laboratory. 

As a revolutionary technology selected among the “Top 10 Global Engineering Achievements of 2024,” CAR-T therapy marks the arrival of the cellular therapy era and brings transformative possibilities to the treatment of cancer and major diseases. During the 2025 International Conference on Cellular and Immune Therapy, a deep dialogue between Prof. Pei Shanshan from Liangzhu Laboratory and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and Prof. Michel Sadelain, a founding pioneer in the CAR-T field and Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET), offered a panoramic exploration of this frontier field. From the pioneering conceptual origins of cellular therapy, to the precise selection of the CD19 target, to more than two decades of persistence behind clinical breakthroughs, and further to the expansion toward autoimmune diseases, the dialogue advanced step by step. It revisited the evolution of the technology from “an impossible idea” to clinical success, directly addressed core challenges such as cancer heterogeneity and treatment cost, and looked ahead to next-generation technologies such as in vivo CAR-T. Hematology Frontier – Blood News hascompiled the full content to present a systematic overview of the past, present, and future of CAR-T therapy.