Excitement At New Cancer Treatment


A therapy that retrains the body's immune system to fight cancer has provoked excitement after more than 90% of terminally ill patients reportedly went into remission.
White blood cells were taken from patients with leukaemia, modified in the lab and then put back.
The lead scientist, Prof Stanley Riddell from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, said all other treatments had failed in these patients and they had only two-to-five months to live.
Experts said the trial was exciting, but still only "a baby step."
Prof Riddell told the BBC: "Essentially what this process does is, it genetically reprograms the T-cell to seek out and recognise and destroy the patient's tumour cells.
"[The patients] were really at the end of the line in terms of treatment options and yet a single dose of this therapy put more than ninety percent of these patients in complete remission where we can't detect any of these leukaemia cells."
Seven of the patients however developed cytokine release syndrome so severe that they required intensive care, and a further two patients died.

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