Melanoma is a serious and fast-growing skin cancer that can spread to other parts of the body. While early-stage melanoma can often be removed by surgery, advanced melanoma is harder to treat. Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocyte (TIL) therapy is a new type of immunotherapy that uses the patient’s own immune cells to help fight this cancer.

TIL therapy takes special immune cells called TILs from the patient’s tumor. These cells already know how to attack the cancer because they live inside the tumor. Doctors grow many more of these TIL cells in the lab and then put them back into the patient. To help the TILs work better, patients also receive a treatment that prepares their body and a protein called IL-2 that helps the TILs grow and survive inside the body. Once inside, the TILs find and destroy melanoma cells.