Cancer patients have been left free of the disease after being treated with a new drug which harnesses the power of their own immune cells.
Four of 38 patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma have seen the disease disappear following treatment, while five others saw reductions of 50 per cent in their tumours.
The drug, which could prove cheaper than other similar therapies, works by activating the body’s own defences to attack the cancer. The results have been described as an "exciting" and "significant" development in the use of immunotherapy, the process of using the body’s own immune system to fight disease. While the trials were only carried out on patients with the blood cancer, it is hoped the methods can be adapated to tackle other cancers. The disease claims the lives of more than 150,000 people in the UK every year and more than one million people are suffering from cancer at any one time. advertisement Earlier this year doctors announced that a patient with advanced skin cancer was free of the disease two years after they injected him with billions of his own immune cells using a different method. However, experts warned at the time that the process could prove extremely expensive. The development of the drug could prove a much cheaper alternative way of providing immunotherapy treatments. Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: "These exciting preliminary results come from using them to harness the body’s own immune response in a new way. Although the side effects need to be monitored carefully, we hope that this type of treatment will prove to be active in larger trials in the future" "This a significant study," said Dr Cassian Yee, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, who has had significant results using the alternative method of treating patients with white blood cells grown in the lab. "It remains to be seen if most of the responses are longlasting. Certainly the results are very promising." The drug, which has been developed by Micromet, in Bethesda, Maryland, was trialled by a team led by Dr Ralf Bargou at University of Würzburg in Würzburg, German. Of the 38 patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who took part in the most recent study, two of the seven who received the highest doses of the drug saw their cancer disappear while five others had reductions in their tumours of more than 50 per cent. One patient on a lower dose also became cancer free and remains so after more than a year. The results, published in the journal Science, are encouraging because they suggest that the bigger the dose, the bigger the effect. Coauthor of the study Dr Patrick Baeuerle, of Micromet, said all seven who received the highest dose responded to the drug. "Two of the seven had a complete response, and five a partial regression (greater than 50 per cent reduction of tumour).". The longest duration of a response was so far seen in a patient who received one quarter of their dose. After 13 months, he remains free of the blood cancer. There are adverse side effects involved, however, such as fevers and chills, occasionally with confusion and tremor, though all stopped after treatment ceased. Now a further trial is investigating how the drugs works in patients with another form of blood cancer, called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Trials with a similar drug are also under way on patients with another type of cancer, which affects glandular tissue and can appear in the lungs, prostate, breast, colon and elsewhere in the body. |
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