David Maloney, MD, PhD, from Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, USA provides an insight into the challenges of commercialising a custom specific cancer therapy, such as CAR T-cells. The main challenges include not only future demand and timely production, but also patient side effects – the two main ones being cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity. However, Dr Maloney is hopeful that these will be solvable due to the very fact that these therapies have resulted in a remission rate of 90%, which means that they are greatly needed. This interview was recorded at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 2017 in Spain, Madrid.