Cells dripped into the brain help man fight a deadly cancer

A man with deadly brain cancer that had spread to his spine saw his tumors shrink and, for a time, completely vanish after a novel treatment to help his immune system attack his disease — another first in this promising field.

Richard Grady, 50, was the first person to get the treatment dripped through a tube into a space in the brain where spinal fluid is made, sending it down the path the cancer traveled to his spine.

He had “a remarkable response” that opens the door to wider testing, said Dr. Behnam Badie, neurosurgery chief at City of Hope, a cancer center in Duarte, Calif., where Grady was treated.

The case is reported in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Grady had some of his blood cells, called T cells, removed and genetically modified to turn them into specialized soldiers to destroy cancer, a treatment called CAR-T cell therapy.

Grady had surgery to remove three of his largest tumors. Then he got six weekly infusions of the cells through a tube into his brain, where the biggest one had been. No cancer recurred there, but the remaining tumors continued to grow, new ones appeared, and cancer spread to his spine.

Doctors decided to place a second tube in his brain, into a cavity where spinal fluid is made, and putting the cells there. After the 10th treatment, “we saw all the tumors disappear,” Badie said.

New tumors, though, have emerged in different spots in his brain and spine, and he is getting radiation treatment. But his response to immunotherapy lasted more than seven months, and “for him to live more than a year and half” after starting it is amazing for a situation where survival often is measured in weeks, Badie said.

SANJAY KANOJIA/GETTY-AFP Railway disaster: At least two people were killed and 28 others were injured Wednesday after a train derailed in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.