In Girl’s
Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia
Grady,
Denise. "In Girl's Last Hope, Altered Cells Beat Leukemia." The
New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2012. Web. 01 Jan. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/health/a-breakthrough-against-leukemia-using-altered-t-cells.html?pagewanted=all>.
This article describes a 7 year-old
girl’s amazing recovery from leukemia with the use of altered T-cells. The
girl, Emma Whitehead, had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010
(when she was 5). She was given an experimental treatment that used a disabled
form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system
genetically to kill cancer cells. The treatment almost killed her,
but she emerged cancer-free, and now she has not relapsed in the past 7 months.
The treatment was developed by Dr. Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania.
The treatment has been tested on ten other people: three adults have been
“cured,” four adults have improved, one child improved then relapsed, and in
another two the treatment didn’t work at all. The mixed results show that it
isn’t 100% effective, but the results are promising. Novartis, a drug company,
is giving the team $20 million to build a research center to bring the
treatment to the market. To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of
the patient’s T-cells and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill
cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is
very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the
T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn
malignant in leukemia. The altered T-cells are then dripped back into the
patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply and start destroying the
cancer.
This treatment has the potential to
become a major cure for leukemia in patients with no other choice. Dr. June
hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an
even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when
other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases. Producing engineered
T-cells costs about $20,000 per patient — far less than the cost of a
bone-marrow transplant. Scaling up the procedure should make it even less
expensive as it gains momentum. Still, the research is in its early stages, and
many questions remain. The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment
works, or why it sometimes fails. If they find that the treatment is not cost
effective or hurts patients more than it cures them, it may not have any
lasting impact on leukemia treatment. The altered T-cells do destroy healthy
B-cells as well as cancerous ones, leaving patients vulnerable to certain types
of infections, so it may not be the best
treatment that can be developed.
I believe that the author did a very
good job explaining the treatment and its implications. However, she sometimes
explained things in too great detail, while leaving other questions unanswered.
At times, her progression of ideas was confusing as well.. She did do a good
job explaining how the treatment works. Most scientific articles describing
treatments are difficult to understand and follow, but her explanation was
clear and comprehendible.
