Feb 2022: In China, a patient whose life was on the verge of ending was entirely healed of leukaemia thanks to CAR T-cell therapy, which stimulated the immune system. All cancer cells vanished swiftly in the first study of its kind. Immune-mediated therapy, which was pioneered in the United States by ACGT scientists such as Dr. Carl June of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Michel Sadelain of Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, among others, is rapidly proving more and more successful in human trials with thousands of patients.
After being treated with CAR T-cell therapy, a middle-aged woman was reportedly cured of leukaemia. “The cancer cells in her body have vanished. Professor Qian Cheng, director of the Bio-Treatment Center at the hospital in Chongqing, said, “She is the first patient who has been entirely cured of the condition via gene therapy.”
Leukemia has been diagnosed in roughly four million people in China. CAR T treatment is a gene therapy that uses modified T cells to fight cancer cells in leukaemia patients. Most patients are treated with chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants. “CAR T therapy is a far better alternative,” Professor Qian said, “since it can lower expenditures by at least 30% compared to bone marrow transplants and is more likely to lead to a cure.”
According to Professor Qian, six other patients getting gene therapy at the same institution have improved their health. In China, CAR T gene therapy is still in the clinical trial stage, with only ten hospitals across the country having received it. The success has encouraged Qian’s team, which will continue to research doses in order to develop the novel medication.
