StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

Researchers are now reporting that an experimental immune system therapy using his own cells has put a male patient’s melanoma into a two year remission. The patient had suffered from melanoma in his lungs and groin. The Hutchinson Cancer Center reminds that this is only a small step forward, and is not ready for widespread use.

“It’s taken us many years to get to this point,” Yee says. “Hopefully, we’ll eventually streamline the process a bit, but it’s not something most labs do.”

No side effects were seen. Details of the melanoma patient’s case appear in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Published n the NE Journal of Medicine, the study describes this new approach.

The researchers grew T cells (that target a specific protein, or antigen, on the tumor cells) in the lab until they had a population they believed was large enough to destroy the cancer.

They infused five billion of the cloned cells into the patient. Two months later, PET (positron emission tomography) and CT (computed tomography) scans did not reveal any tumors—and the patient has remained disease-free for two years, Yee says.

“This is the first example that I can think of where someone actually grew CD4+ T cells outside the body and gave [them] back and got results,” says Willem Overwijk, an immunologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who was not involved in this study.

A small step, but an important step.

Cassian Yee, Experimental Melanoma Treatment, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center