A recent report in the Health and Science section of THE WEEK provides some incredibly encouraging news for cancer patients and their loved ones. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have held only a preliminary study, but are "wildly buoyant" about the results. Three Leukemia patients underwent a special treatment in which their T-Cells, or natural immune system's disease-fighting cells, were genetically re-engineered to specifically target cancer cells; a kind of cellular serial killer. The results are startling: two of the Leukemia patients are cancer-free, and reduced cancer cells in the third by 70%.
According to a report by ABC News, earlier attempts at re-purposing T-Cells have not gone well, with the cells reproducing poorly and eventually disappearing altogether. However, Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at UPenn and one of the researchers on the project, changed their approach. The used a new carrier to bring the new genes into the T-Cell, which then told it to multiply and kill the particular leukemia cells in their patients. Each of the patients were middle-aged men with advanced Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), and their options had nearly run out. However, with June and his team's efforts, the men experienced unprecedented reversals in their conditions. June said that the T-Cells typically attack viruses, killing viral material in the body and then going after any new viruses that pop up, but that's precisely how they attacked the cancer.
Blood was drawn from all three individuals, and T-Cells removed, altered, and then replaced in the patients in three infusions. The millions of altered T-Cells multiplied by 1,000 of times as they attacked the leukemia cells in each of the patients. June reported that there was little change in the men for the first several weeks, and then they all experienced crippling flu-like symptoms. The symptoms (nausea, cramping, chills, fever) are a condition called "tumor lysis syndrome", a result of the rapid loss of cancer cells in the body. According to June, "Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected." One of the patients, according to the report, had more than seven pounds of tumor material in his body and after three-weeks it was completely gone.
Other than tumor lysis syndrome, there is also the potential for the genetically altered T-Cells to fight and kill other infection-fighting cells in the body, leaving the patients open to infection and sickness, which required treatments at their clinic. However, the extreme efficiency and efficacy of this treatment lends real hope to people dealing with cancer all over the world. The only unanswered question is how long the effects may last. researchers designed the T-Cells to multiply, and to create offspring dormant T-Cells that will "wake up" should cancer cells reappear later in life, partly in an effort to fight any re-emergence in their patients. In time, this treatment may become commercially available, but at this point it's a highly specialized operation that will stay largely in the realm of academia and science. Watch the introductory video on this breakthrough treatment here.