In Girl’s Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, said her parents, Kari and Tom. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He 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.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers were presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases. “I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

cont:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/health/a-breakthrough-against-leukemia-using-altered-t-cells.html

[teko]

Awesome, but does this mean she will now be hiv positive I wonder? I guess if faced with immenent death or hiv, I would opt for hiv.

[brice1967]

I read something a while back that a physician/scientist in Canada has been trying to patent a drug that "cures" multiple cancers, but big pharma stands in the way.

There's more money in "treating" rather than "curing" cancer but there is money to be made in the cure as well.  

[orphanedhawk]

I didn't take this to mean she now has AIDs at all.
It says it used a disabled form of the AIDs virus. I assume disabled means, not active but I'm not a scientist or med professional.

[Barb135]

Neither am I a scientist or medical professional, but I agree that "disabled" would mean inactive HIV virus and it doesn't sound like she has been exposed to it.

This is wonderful news, since I have a sister who has leukemia; I'll be doing more research and keeping an eye on this.  While my sister is currently in remission, she will have to have maintenance chemo for the rest of her life and we don't know when/if the disease will rear its ugly head again.

Brice, it's true that big pharma doesn't want "cures", because treatment brings bigger profits.  Maybe that's why they can't use the term "cure" in the article.

[teko]

I saw this little girl on the news tonight. They said she has been cancer free for 8 months now but the treatment nearly killed her, at one point saying they needed to call family in because she may not make it thru the night. But she did and Look at her now! Awesome.