Breakthrough in cancer research

‘Breakthrough’ method rids patients of advanced cancer - Healthzone.ca
Excerpt:

Kalos explains that the technique works much like a vaccine, training
the immune system to target cancer cells, just as inoculations coax it
to fight off viruses.

To do this, researchers isolated
immunological T-cells from the blood of the three leukemia patients and
genetically reprogrammed them using a virus vector that inserted a new
gene into their DNA.

This gene coaxed the T-cells to
create an antibody — known as chimeric antigen receptor or CAR — that
would specifically target structures on the surface of cancer cells.

The newly armed T-cells were then
injected back into the respective patients where they sought out and
bound themselves to the cancer cells and killed them.

More importantly, however, the
reprogrammed hunters caused other T-cells to multiply each time they
attacked, creating more killers with each slain cancer cell.

“Within three weeks the tumours had
been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever
expected,” Dr. Carl June, a senior study author, said in a statement.

“In addition to an extensive capacity
for self-replication the infused T-cells are serial killers. On average
each infused T-cell led to the killing of thousands of tumour cells,”
said June, a University of Pennsylvania pathologist.

It’s estimated the scant number of
T-cells originally injected into the patients killed more than two
pounds of tumour cells in each of the men, whose blood and bone marrow
were replete with cancer.

After a year, microscopic analysis of their blood could find no trace of cancerous cells, Kalos says.

“I am still trying to grasp the
enormity of what I am part of and of what the results will mean to
countless others with (leukemia) or other forms of cancer,” one of the
patients, none of whom were named, said in a written statement.

Kalos says it appears that, like a
vaccine, the T-cells also left the patients with a lingering protection,
which would reactivate the immunological attack if cancer returned.

“If leukemia does come back, those T-cells (appear to be) armed and ready to eliminate it,” he said.