Advanced Skin Cancer Eliminated In Two Men After They Receive Gene Therapy
Posted September 1, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s potentially a major breakthrough in the fight against cancer.
Scientists at the U.S. National Cancer Institute have managed to transform regular white blood cells into tumour fighters that wiped out all traces of the disease in two men with advanced melanoma.
It’s being called an early success in gene therapy for cancer, especially given that the lab-grown cells fought the disease after it had already spread through the body as opposed to earlier attempts targeting single tumours.
However, the National Cancer Institute is being cautious in its optimism, since the genetically-altered cells didn’t help 15 other melanoma victims that underwent the experiment. They’re now trying to strengthen the dose.
The hope is that gene therapy might one day provide long-lasting effects in suppressing tumours – not just for skin cancer patients but for other forms of the disease.
“It’s not like chemotherapy or radiation, where as soon as you’re done, you’re done,” said lead researcher Dr. Steven Rosenberg, the NCI’s surgery chief. “We’re giving living cells which continue to grow and function in the body.”
The two successful patients remained melanoma-free almost two years after receiving the tumour fighters – which were built from their own blood. Doctors can’t predict how they’ll do in the long term.
“I’m cured for now,” said Mark Origer, 53, of Watertown, Wis. “I know how fortunate I am to have gone through this and responded to this. Not everybody’s that lucky.”
In 2002, Rosenberg and his team discovered a small number of hard-to-find cancer-fighting T-cells inside several patients with advanced melanoma. He pulled those cells out of their blood, grew billions of them in a lab and reinjected them. Half of patients significantly improved after receiving the “cell-transfer therapy.”
Because they’re so difficult to spot, the NCI team has been working on creating them from scratch.
“We can take a normal cell from you or me or any patient and … convert that cell into a cell that recognizes the cancer,” Rosenberg explained.
The next step involves figuring out why the genetically-altered cells flourished in only two of 17 patients.
