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Patient’s Cells Deployed to Attack Aggressive Cancer

MAY 8, 2014

Melinda Bachini this week in Billings, Mont. Her treatment, doctors said, could point to a way of fighting the deadliest cancers. Credit Lynn Donaldson for The New York Times

Doctors have taken an important step toward a long-sought goal: harnessing a person’s own immune system to fight cancer.

An article published Thursday in the journal Science describes the treatment of a 43-year-old woman with an advanced and deadly type of cancer that had spread from her bile duct to her liver and lungs, despite chemotherapy.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute sequenced the genome of her cancer and identified cells from her immune system that attacked a specific mutation in the malignant cells. Then they grew those immune cells in the laboratory and infused billions of them back into her bloodstream.

Read the rest of the story in this New York Times article