Print“It’s extremely gratifying to witness the astonishing results firsthand in my patients, having worked for more than a decade developing this technology from the ground up, says Renier Brentjens.”
Researchers seeking a defense against an advanced form of the blood cancer leukemia induced complete remission in nearly all 16 patients treated with genetically reengineered versions of their own immune cells in an early-stage study.
“These extraordinary results demonstrate that cell therapy is a powerful treatment for patients who have exhausted all conventional therapies,” says Michel Sadelain, director of the Center for Cell Engineering at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and one of the study’s senior authors.
Most patients with B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or B-ALL, relapse following chemotherapy, leaving them with few additional treatment options. Only 30 percent of relapsed patients respond to salvage chemotherapy and without a successful bone marrow transplant, many die within a few months. Most of the 1,440 people killed by acute lymphoblastic leukemia each year are adults, according to the American Cancer Society.
The new study, published in the February 19 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine, employed hybrid proteins called chimeric antigen receptors that direct patients’ T cells to latch on to the leukemia cells and kill them. Patients with relapsed B-ALL were given an infusion of their own T cells, reengineered to recognize and destroy cancer cells containing the protein CD19. Of the 16 patients in the study, 88 percent showed a complete response rate and even those with detectable disease prior to treatment had a complete response rate of 78 percent.
Following the experimental treatment, seven of the 16 patients in the study were able to successfully undergo bone marrow transplantation, the standard of care and the only curative option for patients with B-ALL. Three patients were ineligible due to failure to achieve a complete remission; three were ineligible due to pre-existing medical conditions; two declined; and one is still being evaluated for a potential bone marrow transplant.
In 2003, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering were the first to report that T cells engineered to recognize the protein CD19 could be used to treat B cell cancers in mice. In March 2013, the same team of researchers behind the current study first reported complete remission in all five patients with advanced B-ALL who were treated with the cell therapy.
“It’s extremely gratifying to witness the astonishing results firsthand in my patients, having worked for more than a decade developing this technology from the ground up,” says Renier Brentjens, director of cellular therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering and one of the study’s senior authors.
February 23, 2014
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-cell_therapy_shows_promise_in_leukemia_battle_.html
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