Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Cell Therapy Shows Promise for Acute Type of Leukemia

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/health/altered-t-cell-therapy-shows-promise-for-acute-leukemia.html?ref=science

 



This picture is of Emma Whitehead, a 7-year-old girl that had the new form of treatment. Emma is now in remission, or in other words a temporary recovery. This is an amazing feat considering her condition was nearly fatal before the new treatment. Emma is just one example of the amazing result/recovery from this new form of treatment.  


                                           

This article explains a new form of treatment for acute types of Leukemia. It genetically alters a person's white blood cells and so far has been affective on the handful of patients that have gone through the procedure. The article states, "The treatment uses patients’ own T-cells, a type of white blood cell that normally fights viruses and cancer. The patient’s blood is run through a machine that extracts T-cells and returns the rest of the blood to the body. Researchers then do some genetic engineering: they use a disabled virus as a “vector” to carry new genetic material into the T cells, which reprograms them to recognize and kill any cell that carries a particular protein on its surface." This article goes on to explain a few others stories and about the treatment itself. 

This article is very exciting to me. To think that new forms of treatment and procedures to help people fight leukemia, or any form of cancer, is being developed or tested, is a great stride in medical history. This story really hits home because a family that is very close to my family has a daughter that beat leukemia. Hunter was diagnosed on March 2, 2006 and had her last chemotherapy treatment on Mother's Day of 2008. She will be a 5 year survivor this May. She has been an inspiration to my family, as well as our entire community. 

6 comments:

  1. This is crazy how far technology has come today! This type of therapy changed this girls life. Great story!

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  2. Definitely makes you think what else can be cured or treated now-a-days. Glad to hear that someone close to you was able to come out alive from leukemia.

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  3. I really like this topic. Cancer research is always such a fascinating subject. To look at all the new developments that scientist have made gives me a new hope for our future.

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  4. I feel though that this can be dangerous. with the how unpridictable cancer is removing t cells leaves you defensless. and yes they use them to fight the cancer but what if in the time it take for those to change and react leaves an opening. from my understanding these cells work by finding a foreign object in the body. they then find this and creat a antibody to fight the foreign object. so while they are all programmed to fight this one it leaves no others to fight change. hopefully the window it takes for the t cells to recover in order to register another foreign object is short enough where it is a small window. either way it it obviously a huge step in fighting illnesses like this.

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  5. This is a very interesting story! It is good to hear that there is another treatment for that cancer. My mom just got over cancer and im wondering if this is close to her treatments that she had

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  6. It is very admirable to know that individuals are still pursuing a cure and new types of treatment for cancer. I believe their is much hope for future breakthroughs in regards to cancer treatment.

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