Cloned Immune Cells Kill Cancer

[Dan.Linehan]

This is an amazing story. It appears that cloned immune cells have destroyed late stage cancer in a man in just two months.

Cassian Yee at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle extracted immune cells from the patient and found that a small proportion of them, called CD4 T cells, naturally attacked a protein found on nearly three-quarters of the cancer cells. Using cloning techniques, Yee's team replicated these cells until they had more than 5bn of them.

When the cells were injected into the patient they immediately began attacking the cancer. Intriguingly, the patient's immune system gradually began a wider offensive, attacking all the cancer cells in the body, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two months later medical scans failed to pick up any signs of cancer in the patient.

Cloned immune cells cleared patient's cancer | Science | The Guardian

[Erin Pavlina]

Wow that seems really promising.

[Gene]

I saw the reports of this online and was very hopeful that this will be useful and effective in many patients with many types of cancer. I wonder if there are diseases besides cancer that a huge dose of our own cultured cells could be used to treat successfully. Good news!

[Tasaio]

YES! I knew it was only a matter of time until solutions emerged.

[Dannyboy1]

I hate hearing about these miracle cures that will be legal in 20 years. I just had melanoma removed in March. This would be a load off my mind not to have to constantly be checking my skin.

[Brutha]

"Two months later medical scans failed to pick up any signs of cancer in the patient." does not mean that the patient got healed.
A medical scan can only detect cancers that are greater than one million cells. If your treatment shrunks the cancers below those one million cells the cancer still exists and evolves to get immune to the treatment.
A cancer like that can also spread by metastatis.

I hate hearing about these miracle cures that will be legal in 20 years. I just had melanoma removed in March. This would be a load off my mind not to have to constantly be checking my skin.

They did this thing 2006. It takes on average roughly ten years to get something on the market, so there might be 8 years to go.

[Calimero]

Originally Posted by Brutha

"Two months later medical scans failed to pick up any signs of cancer in the patient." does not mean that the patient got healed.
A medical scan can only detect cancers that are greater than one million cells. If your treatment shrunks the cancers below those one million cells the cancer still exists and evolves to get immune to the treatment.
A cancer like that can also spread by metastatis.

Yes you are right, it doesn't mean that a scan doesn't pick up any signs of cancer anymore that someone is really cured.
Even with "chemo" they had patients in the past where they couldn't track the cancer anymore after a series of chemo therapy. But once the treatment was stopped or after some time most of them developed the cancer again.
Also there are many different forms of cancer with many different causes. It depends what kind of info on DNA and of what kind of cells the info got destroyed and in what part of the body the DNA got destroyed and how much of it got destroyed and how fast the cancer got detected.
And also the cause of why info got destroyed on DNA.