

Souped-up immune cells force leukaemia into remission - mrkuchbhi
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22613-soupedup-immune-cells-force-leukaemia-into-remission.html

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JunkDNA
I often comment on "promising" cancer therapies around here when people get
too caught up in the hyperbole of press releases. This one however is a huge
deal. For those of you following along at home, note that _actual people_
(very, very sick people) who had basically no hope using standard care had
their cancer obliterated. Note that the subjects were not rodents (we have
cured rodent cancer a million times) and that at least some of the people have
no detectable cancer anymore. Having worked in oncology research and
development in pharma, I can tell you that outcomes are never this dramatic
with patient populations like this one. This is true personalized medicine.
It's straight out of science fiction. The science is crazy hard and the fact
that it worked is just incredible to me. There are millions of ways this could
have failed (and U. Penn is no stranger to the painful failure of gene therapy
firsthand in the past). (Disclaimer: I work at an institution involved in the
treatment, but have nothing to do with it at all).

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rozap
Thanks for putting this into perspective. I think most have gotten a little
cynical about posts like this.

So now I'm all intrigued, but the article isn't working (502 error), any links
to other sources?

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ars
[https://www.google.com/news?ncl=dvdxbMkYp2U55CMUg96o057NpdQw...](https://www.google.com/news?ncl=dvdxbMkYp2U55CMUg96o057NpdQwM)

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robbiep
This appears to build on similar work using modified T-cells against Chronic
Lymphocytic Leukemia from back in 2005 [1]

Fascinating stuff and it seems like all of the leukemias may fall to a
strategy like this one.

One of the advantages of the use of this treatment in CLL was that patients
were 'immunised' against recurrence of the cancer in the future. It seems that
it is not yet known if this is the case for the treatment discussed here.

Nice to see that work is progressing by leaps and bounds in this area.

[1] <http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849>

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seriocomic
Thanks for the reference - as someone with CLL you can't imagine what went
through my head when I read about this and wondered how transferable the
treatment would be to other blood cancers.

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robbiep
I hope they hurry up and bring it to the mass market.. I really hope that it
will be available for you to use.

