Therapy gives hope for cancer

A CANCER treatment that genetically alters immune cells has shown success in 71 per cent of adults with the most common form of leukaemia, and for whom other medicines had failed.

The treatment, known as experimental chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, has made headlines in recent years, particularly after it helped beat back paediatric leukaemia in the first US child to have the treatment.

The latest study involved 24 adults, aged 40 to 73, with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia that had failed to respond to between three and nine other kinds of treatments.

“It was not known whether CAR T-cells could be used to treat these high-risk patients,” said lead author Cameron Turtle, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

The patients’ T-cells were extracted from their blood and modified in a lab to recognise CD19, a target on the surface of leukaemia cells.

They were then re-infused into the patients, where they swiftly multiplied and began to kill cancer cells.

Seventeen out of 24 (71 per cent) of the group saw their tumours shrink or disappear after the infusion, according to scans of their lymph nodes four weeks after the infusion.

But side effects were common. Twenty of the 24 (83 per cent) experienced cytokine release syndrome — a cluster of symptoms that can include fever, nausea, chills, irregular heartbeat, headache, rash and low blood pressure.