Immune Therapy Achieves Complete Remission in Leukemia

New Immune Therapy Achieves Complete Remission in Blood Cancer Patients

A new therapy that uses a person's immune system to attack tumors led to complete remission in terminally ill blood cancer patients, according to researchers.

In a clinical trial, symptoms vanished in 94 percent of leukemia patients who received the treatment. The response rate was more than 80 percent in patients with other blood cancers, and half achieved total remission, CNBC reported.
The results were presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Detailed data will be published later this year.
They therapy involves removing immune system T-cells from patients, loading them with anti-cancer molecules, and placing them back in the body. The altered T-cells then seek and destroy cancer, CNBC reported.
The results are unprecedented, according to researcher Stanley Riddell.
"In the laboratory and in clinical trials, we are seeing dramatic responses in patients with tumors," he said at the AAAS meeting. "Unlike a chemotherapy drug which destroys cancer cells that are growing, you put in a living therapy that engages the cancer in hand to hand combat."
In patients who receive the therapy, "the bone marrow just goes from being full of leukemia to being in remission, and very large tumors simply melt away," Riddell said on his company website, CNBC reported.
The results are revolutionary, according to Dr. Chiara Bonini, of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy.
"The last time (I saw) a change in remission rates like this must have been in 2000," she said at Monday's joint presentation.
"T-cells are a living drug, and in particular they have the potential to persist in our body for our whole lives," Bonini said.
She believes the first products from this research "will be available very soon," CNBC reported.