Cloned cells kill skin cancer
2008/06/19
Lifestyle. DOCTORS have, for the first time, successfully treated a skin cancer patient with cells cloned from his own immune system, according to a new study.
The ground-breaking treatment for advanced melanoma, or skin cancer, led to a long remission for the patient and used his own cloned infection-fighting T-cells, said doctor Cassian Yee, the lead author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr Yee and his associates from the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle removed CD4+ T-cells, a type of white blood cell, from a 52-year-old man whose melanoma had spread to a groin lymph node and to one of his lungs.
The melanoma was already well advanced and in stage four.
The T-cells which specifically fight melanoma were modified and expanded in the laboratory and some five billion cells were then infused into the patient, who received no other kind of treatment.
Two months later no tumours were found during scans of the patient's organs. And he had been cancer-free for two years, Dr Yee said.
"We were surprised by the anti-tumour effect of these CD4 T cells and its duration of response,'' Dr Yee said.
"For this patient we were successful, but we would need to confirm the effectiveness of therapy in a larger study.''
It was the first ever case to show that cloned cells from a patient's own immune system could successful combat skin cancer. If further tests confirmed the efficiency of the method, it could be used in some 25 per cent of patients with late-stage skin cancer, the study said.
Using a patient's own immune system to combat cancer, called immunotherapy, is a growing area of research that aims to develop less-toxic cancer treatments than standard chemotherapy and radiation.
Some 160,000 cases of melanoma are diagnosed around the world every year, particularly affecting white men living in very sunny regions.
Although it usually affects the skin, in rare cases it can also infect the eyes and intestines.
According to the World Health Organisation, some 48,000 people die from melanoma every year.
The ground-breaking treatment for advanced melanoma, or skin cancer, led to a long remission for the patient and used his own cloned infection-fighting T-cells, said doctor Cassian Yee, the lead author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr Yee and his associates from the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle removed CD4+ T-cells, a type of white blood cell, from a 52-year-old man whose melanoma had spread to a groin lymph node and to one of his lungs.
The melanoma was already well advanced and in stage four.
The T-cells which specifically fight melanoma were modified and expanded in the laboratory and some five billion cells were then infused into the patient, who received no other kind of treatment.
Two months later no tumours were found during scans of the patient's organs. And he had been cancer-free for two years, Dr Yee said.
"We were surprised by the anti-tumour effect of these CD4 T cells and its duration of response,'' Dr Yee said.
"For this patient we were successful, but we would need to confirm the effectiveness of therapy in a larger study.''
It was the first ever case to show that cloned cells from a patient's own immune system could successful combat skin cancer. If further tests confirmed the efficiency of the method, it could be used in some 25 per cent of patients with late-stage skin cancer, the study said.
Using a patient's own immune system to combat cancer, called immunotherapy, is a growing area of research that aims to develop less-toxic cancer treatments than standard chemotherapy and radiation.
Some 160,000 cases of melanoma are diagnosed around the world every year, particularly affecting white men living in very sunny regions.
Although it usually affects the skin, in rare cases it can also infect the eyes and intestines.
According to the World Health Organisation, some 48,000 people die from melanoma every year.
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