INDIANAPOLIS — Community Health Network MD Anderson Cancer Center is expanding access to lifileucel, the first FDA-approved tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy for advanced melanoma, at its Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy Institute in Indianapolis.
Community Health Network became the first and only provider in Indiana to offer TIL therapy in 2025 through a collaboration with Iovance Biotherapeutics. The treatment was initially available at the Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy Institute in Kokomo and is now being offered closer to home for patients in Indianapolis and Central Indiana.
TIL therapy is a personalized form of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own immune cells to help fight cancer. Immune cells are collected from a tumor, expanded into billions of cancer-fighting cells in a laboratory and then infused back into the patient to target cancer more effectively.
Clinical trial results demonstrated encouraging outcomes, including tumor shrinkage in some patients and long-lasting responses in others. Among treated patients, 26% experienced a partial response, 6% experienced a complete response and responses lasted a median of more than three years.