A new type of personalized cancer therapy in which immune cells are harvested from patients' tumors, grown in the lab and infused back into patients showed dramatic results in a small, government-led trial in women with advanced cervical cancer, according to The Associated Press.
The trial by researchers at the National Cancer Institute is the first to show that this promising new technology known as adoptive T cell therapy can have an impact in solid tumors, said Dr. Renier Brentjens, director of cellular therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study, the AP reported.
The approach attempts to take advantage of the body's own T cells, by infection-fighting white blood cells that recognize and mount an attack on harmful invaders such as viruses and cancer, according to the AP. Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering have already shown dramatic results in blood cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
"This is yet another example of a successful application of adoptive T cell immunotherapy, now in the realm of solid tumors, such as cervical cancers," Brentjens said, the AP reported. "We're starting to see that T cells, if properly targeted, can eradicate incurable metastatic cancers."
For the therapy, researchers essentially beefed up the patients' own weak immune responses to the cancer by removing T cells from their tumors that recognize two HPV-related proteins known as E6 and E7, according to the AP. The team then grew up batches of these HPV-targeting immune cells and returned them to the patients to fight the cancer.
Of the nine women tested, three responded, the AP reported. One had a partial response in which the tumor shrank by nearly 40 percent, a response that lasted for three months.
Tinkering with the immune system in this way caused some serious side effects, however, including low blood counts and infections, but the findings are promising enough to expand the trial to more patients, the team said, according to the AP.
Study leader Dr. Christian Hinrichs of the National Cancer Institute said in a press conference at the ASCO meeting that the government plans to expand this study to 35 women with cervical cancer, and it will also test this technology in other cancers caused by HPV, including oral and anal cancers, the AP reported.
Currently, the study is only going on at the National Cancer Institute, and researchers at the ASCO meeting acknowledged that the labor-intensive technology may be difficult to scale up at non-academic centers, according to the AP.
