Gene therapy helps late-stage leukaemia patients for whom other treatments failed
Leukaemia sufferers in Hong Kong, where it is among the 10 deadliest cancers, can take heart after more than two-thirds of patients given experimental immunotherapy saw their tumours shrink or disappear
A cancer treatment that genetically alters immune cells has shown success in more than two-thirds of adults with the most common form of leukaemia, and for whom other medicines had failed, US researchers say.
The treatment, known as experimental chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, has made headlines in recent years, particularly after it helped beat back paediatric leukaemia in the first US child to undergo the treatment.
Leukaemia is one of the top 10 causes of death from cancer in Hong Kong, with roughly 400 new cases diagnosed every year, according to the Hospital Authority.
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The latest study involved 24 adults, aged 40 to 73, with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) who had failed to respond to between three and nine other kinds of treatments and were not expected to live long.
Among the treatments that failed this group was ibrutinib, a targeted cancer drug approved in 2014 for CLL by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to the findings in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“It was not known whether CAR T-cells could be used to treat these high-risk CLL patients,” said lead author Cameron Turtle, an immunotherapy researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, Washington, on Monday.
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The patients’ T-cells were extracted from their blood and modified in a lab to recognise CD19, a target on the surface of leukaemia cells.