Blood injections 'could target cancer'
Wednesday, 15 Aug 2007 12:25
Blood cell injections could target the cancer PTLD
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Blood cell injections could help to treat patients with a particular type of cancer, a new study has shown.
In a study conducted by Edinburgh University researchers around two-thirds of the participants responded to the treatment.
This has raised hopes that if further trials are successful a single bank of cells could potentially serve as a global source of immune cells to treat the blood cell cancer known as PTLD.
The cancer is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), an infection which 90 per cent of adults carry. Normally it causes no ill-effects but in patients who have received an organ transplant it can reactivate and cause PTLD.
About ten per cent of transplant patients are affected by this type of cancer.
In the trial, published in the journal Blood, 'killer' T cells from healthy Scottish patients were injected into 23 adults and ten children with PTLD.
The donors had already been exposed to EBV and their blood cells naturally recognise proteins belonging to EBV and kill virus-infected PTLD cells.
After six months of receiving the blood, 26 patients were still alive. Of these, 14 patients' tumours had completely shrunk and in three patients the tumours shrank to at least half their size.
Thirteen people who initially had a complete response remained free of PTLD for up to 7.5 years.
Lead researcher Dr Tanzina Haque, who is now at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, described the results as "encouraging" and show that T cell therapy "could present a safe alternative treatment for the disease".
Study director and team leader Professor Dorothy Crawford from the University of Edinburgh added: "Current treatments for PTLD include reducing immunosuppression along with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and the drug rituximab. These are all associated with side-effects and do not always successfully treat the condition. This new treatment is proving to be effective and has no toxic effects."
Commenting on the study, Kate Law, director of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK, said: "The results of this study are exciting for transplant patients at risk of PTLD, particularly young children who are more prone to the condition. We hope further trials using this treatment will confirm its power to help people with this type of cancer."
The researchers are now planning to create a new blood bank to enable a larger scale study.