New Cancer Treatment

A new treatment retrains the body’s immune system to fight cancer.

17:35 17 February 2016

Professor Stanley Riddell from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research has provoked excitement after his research on a new cancer treatment produced unprecedented results. The therapy retrains the body’s immune system to fight cancer and based on its initial testing, 90per cent of terminally ill patients that participated the study went into remission.

 

However, the data has yet to be reviewed or published. There are also reports that two patients died from an extreme immune response.

 

The study was discussed at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.

 

 In the trial, cells from the immune system called killer t-cells were taken out from the patients. These cells were modified to target acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

 

Prof Riddell said: "Essentially what this process does is, it genetically reprograms the T-cell to seek out and recognise and destroy the patient's tumour cells.

 

"[The patients] were really at the end of the line in terms of treatment options and yet a single dose of this therapy put more than ninety percent of these patients in complete remission where we can't detect any of these leukaemia cells."