HOW £500,000 THERAPY HELPED

CAR T- cell therapy gives new hope to patients with certain types of blood cancer that fail to respond to other treatments.

A doctor inserts a tube into the patient’s arm to remove blood, which goes through a machine that filters out immune cells called T-cells. The filtered blood is returned to the patient via a tube into their other arm.

The removed T-cells are taken to a laboratory and, over about three weeks, modified to change their DNA so they make a protein called chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR.

This protein ‘turbocharges’ the T-cells so they can recognise another protein that is found only on the surface of many blood cancer cells.

The supercharged T- cells are then injected back into the patient and, once there, clear the cancer cells from the body. In the UK, the treatment is approved for use in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia — which affects nearly 800 children and adults every year — and adults with some types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Researchers are now investigating CAR T-cell therapy for solid tumours, too.

The treatment costs about £300,000 per patient for the drug alone, and there can be side-effects.

One patient in ten gets a temporary flu-like reaction which can cause rapid heart rate, a drop in blood pressure and difficulty breathing.

Professor Karl Peggs, a leading expert on CAR T-cell therapy at University College London, says it’s not yet clear why some patients — including Zac — respond well to the new treatment while up to a third do not.

But in those who do, the trial evidence suggests that just one course of treatment may potentially keep the cancer at bay for life — just as vaccines do with infectious diseases such as measles or mumps.