Cancer patients have been left free of the disease after being treated with a new drug which harnesses the power of their own immune cells.
Four of 38 patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma have seen “complete regressions” following treatment, while five others saw reductions of 50 per cent in their tumours.
While the trials were only carried out on patients with blood cancer, it is hoped the methods can be adapted to tackle other cancers
The drug, which could prove cheaper than other therapies that try to achieve the same effect with cells, works by activating the body’s own defences to attack the cancer.
The results have been described as an “exciting” and “significant” development in the use of immunotherapy, the process of using the body’s own immune system to fight disease.
While the trials were only carried out on patients with the blood cancer, it is hoped the methods can be adapated to tackle other cancers.
The disease claims the lives of more than 150,000 people in the UK every year and more than one million people are suffering from cancer at any one time.
Earlier this year doctors announced that a patient with advanced skin cancer was free of the disease two years after they injected him with billions of his own immune cells using a different method. However, experts warned at the time that the process could prove extremely expensive.
The development of the drug could prove a much cheaper alternative way of providing immunotherapy treatments.
Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: “These exciting preliminary results come from using them to harness the body’s own immune response in a new way. Although the side effects need to be monitored carefully, we hope that this type of treatment will prove to be active in larger trials in the future”
“This a significant study,” said Dr Cassian Yee, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, who has had significant results using the alternative method of treating patients with white blood cells grown in the lab.
“It remains to be seen if most of the responses are longlasting. Certainly the results are very promising.”
The drug, which has been developed by Micromet, in Bethesda, Maryland, was trialled by a team led by Dr Ralf Bargou at University of Würzburg in Würzburg, German.
The results, published in the journal Science, are encouraging because they suggest that the bigger the dose, the bigger the effect.
Coauthor of the study Dr Patrick Baeuerle, of Micromet, said all seven who received the highest dose responded to the drug.
SOURCE/RESOURCE: www.telegraph.co.uk on 8/14/08
