ALL STEM CELLS

Engineering certain immune cells to kill cancerous cells in leukaemia has driven the disease into remission for up to two years in more than half of participants in an early stage clinical trial.
Stephan Grupp at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and his co-workers tested their approach on 30 people
with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, including 25 children, who had failed to respond to conventional treatment or relapsed.
The team engineered a patient’s T cells to express a receptor that targets the cancerous B cell, and infused the T cells back into the person.
After one month, 27 people were in remission, and after up to 2 years, 78% survived — a much higher rate than with chemotherapy. Those in remission had high blood levels of the engineered T cells.
However, all of the participants had inflammatory side effects that required hospitalization.
N. Engl. J. Med. 371, 1507–1517 (2014)