Gene editing saves girl dying from leukaemia in world first
For the first time ever, a person’s life has been saved by gene editing.
...
Layla’s doctors got permission to use an experimental form of gene therapy using genetically engineered immune cells from a donor. Within a month these cells had killed off all the cancerous cells in her bone marrow.
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia and other blood tumors in which B-cells become malignant are extremely well-suited to this approach. You can cook up a T-cell that will react against B-cell specific proteins, inject it, and it will sense all the B cells around it and grow up to large numbers and kill all the B-cells and B-cell derived tumor cells in the patient's body. You can live without B-cells (with a hit to immune system strength) and they have some very cell-specific proteins. Going after B-cell malignancies with modified immune cells has been success...
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