Doctors Cure Skin Cancer Using Cell Cloning

Doctors have successfully rid a patient of advanced skin cancer by treating him with clones of his own immune cells.

In just two months, scans showed that the 52-year-old man's tumours, which had spread to his lungs, were gone.

The astonishing outcome is the first solid evidence that the experimental T-cell treatment works.

But the US scientists are quick to point out that the breakthrough involved just one patient.

Further trials will be needed to prove that the results were no fluke, they stressed.

Advanced malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, is notoriously difficult to treat once it starts to spread.

The US team, led by Dr Cassian Yee, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, pioneered a new therapy based on infection-fighting "helper" CD4 T-cells from the patient's own immune system.

Helper T-cells are specialised white blood cells that "target" foreign invaders or cancerous cells and marshal other elements of the immune system against them.

The new technique involved extracting helper T-cells from the patient and cloning those specifically targeting melanoma.

They were then stimulated to divide and multiply in the laboratory, boosting their numbers 3,000- to 5,000-fold.

Around five billion of the lab-grown cells were then infused back into the patient, unaccompanied by any additional therapies.

After two months the patient was found to be tumour-free, and there was still no sign of cancer when he was last checked two years later.

Before treatment, the man had Stage Four advanced melanoma which had spread to a groin lymph node and one of his lungs.

Dr Yee predicted that if the approach proved successful in other patients, it could be used for the 25% of late-stage melanoma sufferers sharing the same profile as the trial patient.

The findings were published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine

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