WASHINGTON, Aug. 31, 2006
Gene Therapy Breakthrough
First Documented Cases Of Gene Altering Save 2 Melanoma Patients
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Play CBS Video Video Hope In Fight Against Melanoma A new study shows that an experimental gene therapy can help immune cells find and kill melanoma, the skin cancer that kills 8,000 Americans each year. Medical correspondent Dr. Jon Lapook reports.
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(CBS/iStockphoto)
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Mark Origer, 53, of Watertown, Wis., poses with his daughter Katie at her wedding last fall, an event he had feared he wouldn't live to see. Origer underwent an experimental gene therapy for his end-stage melanoma in December 2004 and almost two years later, appears disease-free. (AP)
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Interactive Cancer Learn about the most common cancers, who gets them and how they are treated.
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In The Spotlight The Cancer Connection Four breast-cancer survivors find comfort on the Internet as they share their struggles.
By 2002, Rosenberg had made a breakthrough when he found small numbers of cancer-fighting T-cells inside some patients with advanced melanoma. He literally pulled those cells out of the patients' blood and grew billions more in laboratory dishes, enough to have a chance at overwhelming a tumor. By suppressing the patients' normal immune system to make room for the extra T-cells and then pumping them into their bodies, about half significantly improve.
"Where as a virus or bacteria sets off alarm bells in the immune system, the cancer is barely recognized. The goal of this immunotherapy and gene therapy is to enhance that tiny anti-tumor reaction that the body has, and magnify it so that it can cause destruction of the cancer," Rosenberg said.
But few melanoma patients make enough cancer-fighting T-cells naturally for scientists to cull any from their bloodstream, and T-cells that attack more common cancers are virtually impossible to find. So Rosenberg and colleagues set out to create tumor fighters from scratch.
The scientists took normal lymphocytes — ones that don't recognize cancer — out of 17 patients with advanced melanoma who had exhausted their treatment options. In the lab, they infected those cells with a virus carrying genes that create T-cell receptors, essentially homing devices for, in this case, melanoma. (Different genes create receptors for other cancers.)
"We can take a normal cell from you or me or any patient and ... convert that cell into a cell that recognizes the cancer," Rosenberg explained.
In 15 of the patients, the reinfused, newly armed cells took root and grew at low levels for a few months. But Origer and a second patient grew super-high T-cell levels for over a year, as their tumors gradually faded.
"It's not like chemotherapy or radiation, where as soon as you're done, you're done," said Rosenberg, who is modifying the treatment to better take hold in more patients. "We're giving living cells which continue to grow and function in the body."
Origer had hoped just to survive for his daughter's wedding when he was treated in December 2004. A month later, he recalls, NCI doctors broke into wide grins as they saw his tumors already shrinking. By the time Origer walked his daughter down the aisle last fall, only a small cancerous spot remained visible in his liver, one that surgeons later removed.
"I know how fortunate I am to have gone through this and responded to this. Not everybody's that lucky," he said in an interview.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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There were NO legit studies ever done on the Livingston-Wheeler protocol! Anyway, who better to evaluate her work than her own records? I have studied her for many years and my conclusion was she was falsely villified as a quack. She was considered a respected researcher for years until she started treating cancer. What you are reading and refering to were hatchet jobs/opinions done by the various competing institutes and other medical powers that could not fathom that cancer could be caused by a microbe. I don't want to debate the cancer/microbe link here, but medicine is finding that microbe link more and more plausible every day. Ever hear of the current "new" cervix vaccine? The bottom line is that by the use of this current genetic manipulation, these researchers are causing the body to attack the tumor. Livingston-Wheeler did the same thing via vacination and the strengthening of the immune system years earlier.
My father passed away just recently from lung cancer. All you EVER hear on the news is breast cancer...breast cancer..breast cancer. I would like to hear more about tests for lung cancer, and the success they might be having. I would like to see more PUBLICITY and fighting, and people raising money for more research, for people who have lung cancer. Even though it is too late for my Dad, it is NOT too late for others.
I would ALSO like to see ribbons/pins, people can buy and wear, for every OTHER type of cancer. All you see out there are pink ribbons. For BREAST cancer. It is NOT the only cancer out there.
- by willie0691 August 31, 2006 9:52 PM EDT
- My father heard this on the new today and we were wondering if this could be something (gene altering)that is used for Mantle cell lymphoma? That is what he has. Thanks
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