(Newswire.net — September 3, 2015) Pennsylvania — A new therapy that alters blood cells of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), proved effective in more than half of the test cases, according to a University of Pennsylvania scientific team, Russia Today reported.
Out of 14 patients in the first clinical trial, eight were successfully treated with the university’s personalized cellular therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In the past four and a half years, some patients went into complete remission.
The therapy is based on altering patients’ blood cells in a process developed by University of Pennsylvania scientists. First, the blood’s T cells are being extracted from the body through a machine similar the one used for dialysis. The cells are then reprogrammed to hunt and potentially kill cancer cells in the patient’s body.
The new treatment is actually combined with conventional chemotherapy, before returning new altered T cells, a patient receives a lymphodepleting chemotherapy. The last phase is infusing a new altered blood into the patients body, with cells programmed to recognize and destroy the cancer cells.
The modified T cells contain an antibody-like protein which is designed to target a receptor on the surface of B cells, including the cancerous B cells that characterize several types of leukemia and lymphoma.
“This is a whole new approach to treating cancer,” said David Porter, a leukemia researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author of the study, according to The Verge.
“This is a living drug,” Porter added. “The T cells grow and live in the body.”
The treatment was first mentioned in a study published in 2011. A new report with the promising results was published in August 2015, in Science Translational Medicine.
According to the study, three patients went into a complete remission, four years after being treated with the modified blood cells. Another patient was in remission, however has died of complications from surgery that aimed to remove a skin cancer lesion.
Study says an additional four patients achieved partial responses to the therapy, with responses lasting a median of seven months. Of the people who didn’t respond to the therapy, two have died, and the other four are still alive and receiving other treatments.