Posted on 03/21/2013 4:30:31 PM PDT by neverdem
Genetically engineered immune cells can drive an aggressive type of leukaemia into retreat, a small clinical trial suggests.
The results of the trial — done in five patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia — are published in Science Translational Medicine1 and represent the latest success for a 'fringe' therapy in which a type of immune cell called T cells are extracted from a patient, genetically modified, and then reinfused back. In this case, the T cells were engineered to express a receptor for a protein on other immune cells, known as B cells, found in both healthy and cancerous tissue.
When reintroduced into the patients, the tricked T cells quickly homed in on their targets. “All of our patients very rapidly cleared the tumour,” says Michel Sadelain, a researcher at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and an author of the study. The treatment “worked much faster than we thought”.
The technique has already shown promise against chronic leukaemia, but there were doubts about whether it could take on the faster-growing acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a tenacious disease that kills more than 60% of those afflicted.
Carl June, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a pioneer in engineering T cells to fight cancer, says that he is surprised that the method worked so well against such a swift-growing cancer. The next step, he says, is to move the technique out of the ‘boutique’ academic cancer centres that developed it and into multicentre clinical trials...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
T-cells modified for a benevolent purpose?
Hmmmm......
What was the name of that engineered virus in the “Resident Evil” movies and games?
T-virus?
Ha Ha. Here come the zombies.
We do NOT know what we are messing with.
Amazing the things they can do with ADULT stem cells! It’s kinda like God planned it that way. ;o)
Totally agree - God built into our systems significant diversity and adaptation.
But, I don't think t-cells are the same adult stem cells. T-cells are more specific - a type of white blood cell.
Too many of these tinsy, one off studies get done only to fall flat when under review. I suspect that as the publicity grows people will begin to doubt any of it.
The cells are taken from the person’s own body, not from somewhere else and manipulated into working in the body.
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