"New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations' "

[seeviewonder]

Doctors have treated only three leukemia patients, but the sensational results from a single shot could be one of the most significant advances in cancer research in decades. And it almost never happened.

(snip)

The Penn scientists targeted chroniclymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the most common type of the blood disease. It strikes some 15,000 people in the United States, mostly adults, and kills 4,300 every year. Chemotherapy and radiation can hold this form of leukemia at bay for years, but until now the only cure has been a bone marrow transplant. A bone marrow transplant requires a suitable match, works only about half the time, and often brings on severe, life-threatening side effects such as pain and infection.

In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/ns/health-cancer/#.TkMxe2HyCN8


How long until the pharma corporations sweep this under the rug? Granted, it was a small sample of patients but the research and effects of the treatment are very promising for everyone who has had a friend or relative die from leukemia.

[applegrove]

1. I've known a few people who died of leukemia. This is wonderful news.

Thanks for posting!:woohoo:

[catabryna]

2. They didn't say when these experiments occurred...

You must be cancer free for five years to be considered cured. Remission doesn't count.

eta: Wait, they used human subjects... infected them with "harmless HIV" and then "cured" them?

Something doesn't smell right.

[seeviewonder]

3. Good point.

I would like to read the full version published in the NEJM to see what it has to say but I do not have access to it (nor do I know anyone who does). If anybody finds out, please share.

[GeorgeGist]

5. If you'd read the full MSNBC article ...

you would have noticed a link to the NEJM article. :dipshit:

[seeviewonder]

6. I more or less skim when I read unless it requires full attention.

I don't think calling me a "dipshit" was required. Thank you for pointing out the mistake regardless.

[seeviewonder]

7. It states in the NEJM article that:

"Remission had been sustained for 10 months as of this writing." Of course, I do not know if that was based on the first draft or the final version placed into the journal. Either way, it probably did not take 4+ years to get the article approved for inclusion.

[catabryna]

9. This is why we should never sacrifice true science...

to the masquerade of businesses whose only goal is to line their pockets. :)

[KittyWampus]

11. "harmless HIV" was an analogy to explain how the white blood cells multiplied/stayed in the blood

long enough.

[catabryna]

12. An analogy is not science...

And, as described, it wasn't "harmless".

These are experiments that they do in mice. Induce a disease in a human and then find a cure?

Sick.

eta: PETA, where are you?

[elehhhhna]

4. the quote probably came from the sales and accounting departments

designer shit like this = too expensive for MOST americans.

[greymattermom]

8. article

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849#t=articleTop


I hope this works. I have access to NEJM.

Here are two paragraphs.

With the use of gene-transfer techniques, T cells can be genetically modified to stably express antibodies on their surface, conferring new antigen specificity. Chimeric antigen receptors combine an antigen-recognition domain of a specific antibody with an intracellular domain of the CD3-zeta chain or FcγRI protein into a single chimeric protein.1,2 Although chimeric antigen receptors can trigger T-cell activation in a manner similar to that of endogenous T-cell receptors, a major impediment to the clinical application of this technique to date has been limited in vivo expansion of chimeric antigen receptor T cells and disappointing clinical activity.3,4 Chimeric antigen receptor–mediated T-cell responses can be further enhanced with the addition of a costimulatory domain. In preclinical models, we found that inclusion of the CD137 (4-1BB) signaling domain significantly increases antitumor activity and in vivo persistence of chimeric antigen receptors as compared with inclusion of the CD3-zeta chain alone.5,6

In most cancers, tumor-specific antigens for targeting are not well defined, but in B-cell neoplasms, CD19 is an attractive target. Expression of CD19 is restricted to normal and malignant B cells and B-cell precursors.7 We have initiated a pilot clinical trial of treatment with autologous T cells expressing an anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CART19); three patients have been treated. Here we report on the immunologic and clinical effects of in vivo T-cell treatment with chimeric antigen receptors in one of the patients, who had advanced, p53-deficient CLL.

[ddeclue]

10. I hope it works but 3 patients is a statistically meaningless number.

These drugs have to get evaluated across much larger numbers before being put into actual daily use.

[cutlassmama]

13. My mother had CLL and Lou Gherig's when she died. It would have been

nice to have a cure for her because the effects of CLL made the Lou Gherig's worse.