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Cancer patient recovers after injection of cloned immune cells from his own body

Posted 19 Jun 2008 in cancer, healthcare, science

Exciting proof that cloning is good for more than just duplicating sheep and mediocre Star Wars prequels.

A cancer patient has made a full recovery after being injected with billions of his own immune cells in the first case of its kind, doctors have disclosed.

The 52-year-old, who was suffering from advanced skin cancer, was free from tumours within eight weeks of undergoing the procedure.

After two years he is still free from the disease which had spread to his lymph nodes and one of his lungs.

Doctors took cells from the man’s own defence system that were found to attack the cancer cells best, cloned them and injected back into his body, in a process known as “immunotherapy”.

Experts said that the case could mark a landmark in the treatment of cancer.
[...]
Ed Yong, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “It’s very exciting to see a cancer patient being successfully treated using immune cells cloned from his own body. While it’s always good news when anyone with cancer gets the all clear, this treatment will need to be tested in large clinical trials to work out how widely it could be used.”
[...]
Genetically altered white blood cells have been used before to treat cancer patients but this is the first study to show that simply growing vast numbers of the few immune cells in the body to attack a cancer can be safe and effective.

Normally there are too few of the cells in a patient’s body to effectively fight cancer.
[...]
The work raises hopes that this approach could not only offer a more effective treatment for skin cancer, or melanoma, which kills around 2,000 people in Britain alone, but be applied to other cancers too.

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

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