Leukemia Treatment Virtually Eradicates Cancer, Kills ‘Pounds’ Of Cancerous Cells
Amazingly, the breakthrough actually uses patients’ own T cells to fight the cancer, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s news release. Researchers took the T cells of the patients, ran them through Penn’s vaccine production facility, and then reintroduced them to the patients’ bodies following chemotherapy.
In more scientific terms, from Penn Medicine:
After removing the patients’ cells, the team reprogrammed them to attack tumor cells by genetically modifying them using a lentivirus vector. The vector encodes an antibody-like protein, called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), which is expressed on the surface of the T cells and designed to bind to a protein called CD19.Once the T cells start expressing the CAR, they focus all of their killing activity on cells that express CD19, which includes CLL tumor cells and normal B cells. All of the other cells in the patient that do not express CD19 are ignored by the modified T cells, which limits side effects typically experienced during standard therapies.
The result was a very, very effective means of treatment that showed very positive results within 28 days. “In addition to an extensive capacity for self-replication, the infused T cells are serial killers. On average, each infused T cell led to the killing of thousands of tumor cells – and overall, destroyed at least two pounds of tumor in each patient,” June told Penn.
