Treatment involves manipulating immune cells to fight cancer.
By Raif Karerat
Diagnosed with incurable aggressive leukemia only five months ago, one-year-old Layla Richard’s prospects were not optimistic. Her parents had been grimly informed that their infant daughter was about to die.
However, the desperate couple refused to accept such a fate for their newborn, “So we asked the doctors to try anything,” said Layla’s mother, Lisa Foley, said in a hospital press release.
“Anything†turned out to be a highly experimental and possibly ineffective therapy that had never before been tested on anything larger than a lab mouse, according to the Washington Post.
To combat the onset of cancer in little Layla’s system, scientists used a new gene-editing technique to manipulate immune cells to fight the disease.
The treatment involves using tiny molecular “scissors†to edit genes and make immune cells especially capable of hunting out and destroying cancer, represents a promising new front in the fight against cancer.
Doctors described her response to the therapy as “almost a miracle†and “staggering†after her family was told there were no other options left, according to the BBC. Experts are commenting that it “could represent a huge step forward†in how leukemia is treated.
Layla’s story is being presented at the American Society of Hematology, but as a single case without any clinical testing.
“This is the first time human cells, engineered in this particular way, have been given back to a patient and that was a big step for us,” said Prof. Waseem Qasim of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, where the procedure was completed.
“The technology is moving very fast, the ability to target very specific regions of the genome have suddenly become much more efficient and we think that this technology will be the next phase of treatments,” he continued.