First cancer 'living drug' gets go-ahead

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41094990

First cancer 'living drug' gets go-ahead

By James Gallagher
Health and science reporter, BBC News website

30 August 2017

From the section Health

The US has approved the first treatment to redesign a patient's own immune system so it attacks cancer.
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The company Novartis is charging $475,000 (£367,000) for the "living drug" therapy, which leaves 83% of people free of a type of blood cancer.
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The living drug is tailor-made to each patient, unlike conventional therapies such as surgery or chemotherapy. It is called CAR-T and is made by extracting white blood cells from the patient's blood. The cells are then genetically reprogrammed to seek out and kill cancer. The cancer-killers are then put back inside the patient and once they find their target they multiply.
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The therapy, which will be marketed as Kymriah, works against acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Most patients respond to normal therapy and Kymriah has been approved for when those treatments fail.

Dr Stephan Grupp, who treated the first child with CAR-T at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said the new approach was "enormously exciting". "We've never seen anything like this before," he added. That first patient had been near to death, but has now been cancer-free for more than five years.

Out of 63 patients treated with CAR-T therapy, 83% were in complete remission within three months and long-term data is still being collected.
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