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April 2, 2019 – 2:24 pm
PanARMENIAN.Net – A treatment that helps the immune Deadly blood cancer system shows promising signs against some solid tumors, giving hope that this approach could be extended to more common cancers in the future, reports the Associated Press.
The treatment, called CAR-T Therapy, involves the genetic modification of certain cells of the patient to help them recognize and fight cancer. Richard Carlstrand of Long Key, Florida, had it more than a year ago for mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs.
"We were going to unknown territories" to try this, he says, but now he shows no signs of cancer and "I could not be happier."
The findings regarding his case and other cases were discussed Sunday at a conference of the American Cancer Association in Atlanta.
The first CAR-T therapies were approved in 2017 for certain leukemias and lymphomas. After being modified in the laboratory, the modified immune system cells are returned to the patient intravenously, placing them exactly where the cancer is – in the blood.
But this approach does not work well if cells have to travel a great distance in the blood to get to tumors in the lungs, bad, colon or other places.
"Solid tumors are notorious for not letting immune cells enter," and are not enough to have an effect, said Dr. Prasad Adusumilli of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
A bigger concern is that the solid tumor cell proteins that these therapies also aim for are found in normal cells at lower levels, so the therapy could also be harmful to them.
Adusumilli helped design a new CAR-T to try to avoid these problems and tested it on 19 patients with mesothelioma and two others with lung cancer and one with bad cancer, respectively, which had spread to the chest wall. About 150,000 patients in the United States each year are facing this situation.
The modified cells were injected directly into the chest where the tumors were located. A genetic safety switch has been added so that a drug can be administered to destroy the cells if they cause damage.
After the therapy, a patient was able to undergo surgery and radiation therapy and is doing well 20 months later without further treatment. Fifteen others were doing well enough to start taking a medication that strengthens the immune system differently.
Eleven of the 15 were studied long enough to report on the results. Two had signs of cancer disappeared for about a year, but one relapsed later. Six saw their tumors contract. Three have seen their cancer worsen.
There were no serious side effects although some patients had temporarily low blood counts and fatigue.
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