New ‘cell therapy’ results give very promising results after clinical trial on children previously diagnosed with incurable leukaemia

A personalised immune treatment for cancer, developed at University College London, has given “very promising results” in its first clinical trial on children with previously incurable leukaemia.

The therapy is a “living medicine” in a new class known as Car-T. It involves extracting immune cells from the patient, genetically engineering them in the lab to recognise the cancer cells, and then infusing them back into the bloodstream.

Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London treated 14 children with incurable acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common cause of cancer death in people aged under 18. They had exhausted all normal treatments, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and bone marrow transplants, and were expected to die very soon.

The results, published in Nature Medicine, showed that 12 of the 14 patients cleared their disease within three months, although in seven there was some recurrence. Five have remained free of leukaemia. Two did not go into remission.

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