http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dVvEIYlj_wA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dVvEIYlj_wA

this 4 minute video shows an inspiring story of a young girl, Emma who was cured of Leukaemia by injecting her with HIV-modified T-Cells which were then capable of attacking the cancer cells.


It is important though to get the correct information on how it was actually done...

No, doctors did not “inject HIV into a dying girl” to treat her cancer

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Kat Arney


We’ve recently noticed an inspiring short film circulating on the internet about how doctors in the US have apparently cured a child of leukaemia by “injecting her with HIV”.

But while the actual science behind this story is fascinating, the treatment is still at an extremely experimental stage and has only been tested in a handful of patients.

And while we’re always keen to welcome exciting experimental cancer treatments, we also want to clear up a few misconceptions about what the research actually involved.

To be absolutely clear, the doctors in the video did NOT inject HIV – nor a “deadly disease” – into a child.

So who are these people, and what did they actually do?



Turning the immune system on cancer

The research comes from Professor Carl H. June and his team in Philadelphia in the US. He’s a highly-respected scientist working on cancer, HIV and the immune system, and has published his work in hundreds of papers in many leading scientific journals over several decades.

The immune system is an incredibly hot topic in cancer research. Cancer is an illness that starts from our own cells going rogue within us. Our immune system is pretty good at recognising and attacking foreign invaders – such as bacteria or viruses – but it doesn’t do so well at tackling tumours.

A huge amount of research effort around the world is focused on trying to understand why the immune system doesn’t recognise and fight off the disease. And there’s also a lot of work aimed at harnessing this powerful force for treating cancer, and this is leading to new ways to treat the disease.

Professor June and his team are taking an interesting approach to this challenge. In particular, they’re developing new ways to turn the power of the immune system on leukaemia – a cancer caused by white blood cells (usually B cells, also part of the immune system themselves) growing out of control.

They’ve developed a technique in which they collect special ‘killer’ immune cells, called T cells, from a cancer patient. These are then ‘reprogrammed’ in the lab using a modified virus, which is very good at smuggling genes into the T cells.

In this case, the researchers added genes carrying instructions that tell the T cells to make a new protein called a “chimeric antigen receptor” – this lets them lock on to molecules found on the surface of cancer cells, killing them in the process.

These reprogrammed T cells are then injected back into the patient, where they grow and multiply, creating an army of killer cells to fight the disease.

At least, that’s the theory.

From the lab to the clinic

The Philadelphia team has been working on this technique for many years, developing it first in the lab then testing it in animals with promising results. They’re now taking this a step forward, into clinical trials with cancer patients.

The situation described in the video, where a little girl called Emily Whitehead (referred to as Emma in the film) undergoes modified T cell treatment, isn’t the first time this approach has been tested in people. There’s more than a decade’s worth of data looking at the safety and effectiveness of virus-modified T cells in clinical trials for treating people with HIV as well as cancer.

In 2011, Professor June’s team treated three adults with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) with virus-modified immune cells as part of a small, early-stage clinical trial. All three had undergone several rounds of chemotherapy, yet their cancer kept coming back. For two of them, their cancer completely went away after the T cell therapy – something known as “complete remission”. This was an important and impressive result, although one that was probably over-hyped in the media at the time.

Further results from the trial – totalling 10 adult patients with CLL and two children with a different type of leukaemia (acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, or ALL) were announced at a scientific conference at the end of 2012. The researchers claimed that nine out of the twelve patients had been treated successfully – presumably three of the adult patients are from the 2011 paper, while the two children are likely to be from the paper we’ll discuss shortly.

And in March this year, a team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York published results testing a similar approach in five adults with ALL. In all five, the cancer vanished, although four of them went on to have further treatment so it’s hard to say whether this therapy was solely responsible for curing them. And for the final patient, the cancer came back once the reprogrammed T cells had died off in their body.

From what we can tell, the girl in the video – Emily/Emma – is being treated as part of another small-scale, early-stage clinical trial for children with leukaemia and lymphoma, testing the virus-modified T cell treatment. This is primarily a trial to find out whether the treatment is safe, rather than how well it works.

Results from two children with ALL were recently published in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. Of the two kids, one seems to have had a complete remission – we can only assume this might be Emily, though she isn’t mentioned by name in the paper. Sadly, the other child didn’t do so well. The cancer came back just two months after the T cell treatment.

Obviously, for Emily and her family this experimental therapy has been nothing short of a miracle. But from the handful of cancer patients treated so far, it’s clear that it doesn’t work for everyone – something that’s rightly pointed out in the film.

The therapy also causes significant side effects, dramatically described in the video. Several of the patients who receive the modified T cells seem to experience what’s known as a “cytokine storm” – a potentially fatal immune reaction. Subjecting weakened cancer patients to such a barrage is highly risky, so researchers need to proceed with great caution as the clinical trials continue recruiting patients.

How does HIV fit into the picture?

Promoting the video, the Upworthy website boldly states that the doctors are injecting “HIV into a dying girl”, and that she received a “deadly disease”. This is a serious bending of scientific truth, and very misleading.

In fact, the researchers are using a type of virus called a lentivirus to reprogramme the T cells. This family of viruses – of which HIV is a member – are particularly skilled at sneaking into cells and embedding their genetic code within the cell’s DNA. Unsurprisingly, this makes them a good vehicle for smuggling in the genetic instruction telling T cells to attack the cancer.

According to the video, Professor June says that the virus used in these experiments was originally derived from HIV, and we hear the film-maker asking off-camera “So you’re taking the HIV virus and infecting healthy cells with it to help kill cancer?” However, the virus has undergone significant genetic tinkering, meaning that it is no longer harmful (as June does go on to explain). And it’s arguable whether it should even be referred to as HIV at all, given how much it has been altered.

And the researchers didn’t inject any virus into anyone. As we’ve explained, they took immune cells out of the patient, treated them with the virus in the lab, then injected the modified cells back in.

[size=18pt]To sum up[/size]

Broadly speaking, we feel that this film is inspiring, and we’re always happy to see the fruits of promising new therapies for cancer. But to promote “injecting HIV” as a treatment is misleading.

One child surviving ‘incurable’ cancer is an amazing event, but there is a lot more work to be done to find out how best to use this new technology. At the moment it’s still highly experimental and expensive. It’s only being trialled in a very small number of patients, primarily to make sure it is safe, and so far we’ve seen that it doesn’t work for everyone.

In the case of the child whose cancer came back after treatment, the researchers found that her cancer cells had somehow stopped carrying the T cells’ target molecule. So it’s likely that other targets will need to be identified, to make the treatment more effective for more patients in the future.

On a positive note, there’s no reason why this type of treatment should be restricted to cancers affecting the immune system (namely leukaemia and lymphoma), although they’re much more accessible to the killer T cells. Researchers elsewhere are investigating how to target a range of different types of cancer with this approach.

There are several similar therapies being tested in the lab and in clinical trials around the world, including in the UK. And Cancer Research UK scientists are finding out whether harmless genetically-engineered viruses could be used as therapeutic vaccines, training the immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells.

It’s still early days for these exciting new approaches and there are many hurdles to jump, but we’re looking forward to the day when they can be used to treat patients on a wider scale.

http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2013/06/25/no-doctors-did-not-inject-hiv-into-a-dying-girl-to-treat-her-cancer/

Interesting stuff.

texanomaly: Interesting stuff.

Yep. this is what Science does. look for practical and workable solutions to human problems, Not...

Mr Troll: Yep. this is what Science does. look for practical and workable solutions to human problems, Not...

Science, and ingenuity have certainly brought about some useful things. I have always been fascinated by how the human body works. Amazing machine.

science really as no bound baa

Choi,I no fit Shout

e long sha.... feeling sleepy*ma go piss for banana island first*

i knew this virus could also be a solution someday.

U cure leukemia with HIV, then cure HIV with bee honey...everybody lives happily ever after

Tell me how this works again

I strongly believe that one day, Scientists will break even on this treatment of Cancer.
Kudos to all involved in the research work.

I know cancerreaserch for UK and they work together with some other institutes in USA and europa.

The cancerreaserch try to write the articles that the people understand it, because this is a non profit organisation in UK they also sponsor very good master degree students who want to work as reasercher for cancer and who want to make a PhD.

they make a very good work in UK

Hmmm

i see

Frontpage!!!!!!!!!!!

who don do am finish?

hmmm

Some World War Z type Shiiit going on here no doubt. Using a disease to cure/prevent another.

what is the name of this drug.

OP stop all the unnecessary clearifications n let's face the reality. So dis wicked Doctors injected a girl with HIV so she will die after d HIV kills d cancer. In other words if u say she won't die, so y is HIV a deadly disease then.


*open for yabbing but just know dat Jesus Loves Me.

don-Phill:
who don do am finish?

dr. obasohan will tell u that its possible to cure the disease coincidentally when it occurs in a patient with a malignant leukaemic condition.
that is to say, that the leukaemia is what is being attended to and not d hiv.

oasislomo: what is the name of this drug.

i know of a theraphy dont know about this professeur"s shit.


ever heard of bone marrow transplantation.

holy mercy mother of all cure! what am i seeing?

Hmm. I pray the cell do not re modify

Mhen...Hon. Patrick obahagian as MC at 1st year,2nd term of Gov Oshiomhole

I pity the boy on the bed whose eyes looks sore.

I pray it turns out fine.

11

Nothing to comment

This is a breakthrough. I will rather have HIV than have cancer. Cancer kills very fast but HIV can be curtailed. Magic Johnson has been living with the HIV virus for 23 years and still going strong. By the time HIV eventually gets a cure then cancer and HIV will be dead for good.

dvdon: OP stop all the unnecessary clearifications n let's face the reality. So dis wicked Doctors injected a girl with HIV so she will die after d HIV kills d cancer. In other words if u say she won't die, so y is HIV a deadly disease then.


*open for yabbing but just know dat Jesus Loves Me.

smh dis guy is a waste of sperm

yea very possible, if u know about catalytic antibodies, it can now be used to destroy tumor cells and also destroy T-cells infected with HIV. Give some credits to microbiologist too, pleasee.....