WIKIMEDIA, VASHIDONSKGene therapy has rid three adult patients of acute leukemia. The patients have been cancer-free for 5 months to 2 years, according to a study published last week (March 20) in Science Translational Medicine. Two other patients received the therapy, but one died for reasons believed to be unrelated, and the second died after relapsing.
“We had hoped, but couldn’t have predicted that the response would be so profound and rapid,” Renier Brentjens, lead author of the paper and an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, told The New York Times.
The patients all had B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and had relapsed following chemotherapy. The outlook for patients in this category is typically bleak.
The researchers filtered the patients’ blood for T-cells and engineered them with a virus carrying genetic material that would make them recognize CD19, a protein expressed on the surfaces of B-cells. When put back into the patients, the T-cells were meant to attack the B-cells, whether cancerous or normal. The patients experienced unpleasant and dangerous immune reactions, but four of them, including the one that eventually ...
