Hong Kong public hospitals to offer gene-altering therapy to some cancer patients who don’t respond to other treatments
- Children, young adults with blood cancer among those who can benefit from CAR T-cell therapy
- Treatment which helped sportsman Kelvin Lau beat leukaemia to be offered to 30 patients a year
Called CAR T-cell therapy, it gives hope to patients who do not respond well to other treatments for two types of cancer, including a blood cancer affecting children and young adults.
The Hospital Authority, which runs all Hong Kong public hospitals, estimates that about 100 patients will be suitable for the treatment annually, but has set a limit of proceeding with 30 a year for now.
Two patients have received CAR T-cell therapy under the new programme this month.
Sportsman Lau, 26, was the first in Hong Kong to undergo the treatment last year outside clinical trials, after he crowdfunded HK$2.5 million to pay for it. The news of his treatment and recovery was revealed in February this year.
CAR T-cell treatment – or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy – works by genetically engineering the patient’s own T cells, a type of white blood cell critical in fighting infection, to recognise and destroy cancer cells.
“T cells act as the body’s army but they are unable to identify the enemy because the cancer cells are very tricky. We give the T cells a tool to recognise them,” said Dr Larry Lee Lap-yip, the Hospital Authority’s chief manager of integrated care programmes.
The patient’s blood is collected and the T cells are shipped overseas for genetic modification. They are altered by adding a gene for a special receptor designed to target a specific protein, which helps them locate and kill cancer cells.