Big Medical Advances

New cancer treatment reprograms T-cells. [Link]

In this new approach, scientists used the patient's own T-cells - white blood cells that help fight infections such as bacteria. Scientists remove the T-cells, genetically reprogram them to attack leukemia cells, and inject them back into the patient.

Researchers treated three patients with CLL. In two, the cancer cells were completely gone six months after the immune therapy.

"The clinical doctor involved in this was astonished and so were the patients that a single infusion of the cells could have such pronounced anti-tumor effects in the patients," Dr. June says.

This new treatment does have significant side-effects. The most common is a very bad flu-like illness, but so far all 3 patients - who had incurable leukemia and no other options - are doing well about a year after treatment.

This form of treatment is like giving a scent to a bloodhound. These T-cells have been given the scent of the leukemia cells and go hunt them down. The hope is to give T-cells the scent of colon cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer and train them go out and kill all kinds of cancers.

New general antiviral drug. [Link]

In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.

The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it should work against all viruses,” says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory’s Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group who invented the new technology.

Because the technology is so broad-spectrum, it could potentially also be used to combat outbreaks of new viruses, such as the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak, Rider says.