Small study on new leukemia treatment yields striking results
Posted August 11, 2011 8:46 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The startling results of a very small study will likely provide great hope for people battling leukemia.
Scientists treated three advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) by genetically modifying the patients’ blood cells to attack the cancer cells. Previously, the only treatments for CLL were risky stem cell or bone marrow transplants, which don’t always work.
“Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected,” lead researcher Dr. Carl June said in a statement Wednesday.
“It worked much better than we thought it would.”
Two of the men have been in remission for a year and the third man’s health has improved, although he still has some cancer.
While doctors and scientists are excited about this development, they’re also reining in enthusiasm due to the fact only three patients were involved in the research, which was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.
Scientists have spent years trying to find ways to boost the immune system’s ability to kill cancer. There had been previous attempts to alter T cells that didn’t yield positive results.
June and his fellow researchers improved on the technique by delivering new genes into the T cells — white blood cells that fight viruses — and a signaling mechanism informing the cells to multiply and kill cancer cells. The technique yielded what have been called armies of “serial killer” cells that attack new cancer cells as they appear.
“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 tumor cells – and overall, destroyed at least two pounds of tumor in each patient,” June said in a news release.
Severe flu-like symptoms experienced by one 64-year-old patient signaled the treatment was working. June said the chills, fever and nausea the man experienced two weeks after the treatment were caused by the mass killing of cancer cells.
Researchers plan to test the same treatment in patients with other cancers, such as ovarian and pancreatic, and they want to try it when standard therapy has failed in some pediatric leukemia cases.
With files from The Associated Press
