‘Nine leukemia patients are cancer-free after being treated with genetically-altered versions of their own immune cells, giving strength to a promising new approach for treating the blood cancer’, as opposed to the present treatment of chemotherapy and bone-marrow transplants.
‘The trial of 12 patients, two of them children, bolsters findings from 2011. Then, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reported that two of the first three patients treated showed no traces of the malignancy after getting the therapy. Today’s results were presented at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting in Atlanta.’
‘The approach developed by University of Pennsylvania scientists has since been acquired by Novartis.
The scientists, led by Carl June, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a study author, used genetic engineering to manipulate white blood cells extracted from the patients. The researchers reprogrammed the cells to specifically target the leukemia cells and reinjected them into the patients.’
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