By Denis Grady
Dayton Daily News
PHILIPSBURG, PA. — A Pennsylvania girl is the first child and one of the first humans in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal: giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.
Three adults with chronic leukemia 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, an oncologist and member of a University of Pennsylvania research team that is presenting its findings about the treatment at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting this week in Atlanta.
Emma Whitehead, then 6, was near death from leukemia last spring. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.
Desperate to save her, her parents sought the 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 used a disabled form of the AIDS virus to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. The treatment nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free and seven months later is still in remission. She is among a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment. Similar approaches are 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 Pennsylvania research team. 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.
In addition to the successes with the new treatment, 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.
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.
Copyright 2012 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.