Key points from article :
Recent study explored a new way to treat a fast-moving blood cancer called T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in patients who no longer responded to chemotherapy or bone-marrow transplants. Scientists at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital used donor T-cells and altered their DNA through a method known as base editing, which lets researchers change a single genetic letter at a time.
By making several careful edits, they disabled features that would cause the cells to attack the patient, removed a marker so the cells would not destroy each other, protected them from a chemotherapy drug, and finally trained them to hunt down T-cells carrying a marker called CD7, which appears on both healthy and cancerous cells.
The first patient treated, a teenager from Leicester, has remained cancer-free and now hopes to study science herself. In total, eleven people were treated across Great Ormond Street Hospital and King’s College Hospital, and nine went into deep remission long enough to receive a transplant that rebuilt their immune system.
Seven remain free of the disease months to years later. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest this approach may offer hope to people who have run out of options.
