A pioneering cancer treatment provided to a 13-year-old British child has resulted in her remission, according to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH)
The hospital issued a statement detailing the fight of a teenager named Alyssa with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a severe form of blood cancer.
6 months ago, after all other treatments for T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia had failed, Alyssa became the first person in the world to receive base-edited cell therapy as part of a clinical trial at GOSH & @UCLchildhealth. Meet Alyssa & the research team behind the trial 👇 pic.twitter.com/YwCQfnCJux
— Great Ormond Street Hospital (@GreatOrmondSt) December 11, 2022
Alyssa's fight with 'incurable' cancer
Alyssa was diagnosed with the condition in 2021 and undergone all existing conventional therapies, including chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, according to the hospital.
None of the therapies were determined to be effective, and no more treatments were offered under conventional care.
In May of this year, Alyssa became the first patient to be recruited in a new clinical study to receive "genetically modified" immune cells from a healthy donor.
According to the hospital, Alyssa was in remission after 28 days and had a second bone marrow transplant to help repair her immune system.
According to the statement, Alyssa's sole alternative without this experimental therapy was palliative care.
According to Robert Chiesa, a GOSH specialist, while her reversal was "quite remarkable," the outcomes needed to be followed and validated in the following months.
What exactly is the treatment?
The hospital's medical staff have been employing a genome editing technique known as base-editing — a means of chemically changing DNA code to transform T-cells, which are white blood cells that play an important role in the immune system.
The patient is given the altered T-cells, which then fight and destroy malignant T-cells in the body without harming one another.
"It's our most sophisticated cell engineering so far and paves the way for other new treatments and ultimately better futures for sick children," said Waseem Qasim, a cell and gene therapy professor at GOSH.
The hospital stressed that Alyssa was the world's first patient to undergo the base-edited cell treatment and was healing at home.
"Once I do it, people will know what they need to do, one way or another, so doing this will help people," Alyssa explained.
Doctors are now seeking for additional 10 patients who have exhausted all other possible treatment choices in the hopes that the medication can be administered to youngsters sooner and perhaps be viewed as another option to treat different forms of leukaemia.
According to the hospital, the experiment would only accept individuals who are qualified for National Health Service (NHS) care.
SOURCE
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