Doctors Inject Modified HIV Into Dying Girl to treat her cancer
Fighting Fire with fire
Professor Carl H. June and his team in Philadelphia, are developing and testing a new ways to turn the power of the immune system on leukemia ( a cancer caused by the white cells growing out of control.
Professor Carl H. June, a highly respected scientist working on cancer, HIV and the immune system and his team developed a technique in which they collect special ‘killer’ immune cells, called T cells, from a cancer patient. These are then ‘reprogrammed’ in the lab using a modified virus, which is very good at smuggling genes into the T cells.
In this case, the researchers added genes carrying instructions that tell the T cells to make a new protein called a “chimeric antigen receptor” – this lets them lock on to molecules found on the surface of cancer cells, killing them in the process.
These reprogrammed T cells are then injected back into the patient, where they grow and multiply, creating an army of killer cells to fight the disease.
The professionals that are salivating ... as he says ... I don't think np's desire such patients as much as they are perhaps better equipped to care for these patients! I get excited when I get consults on patients that the doctors are asking me to manage because they simply have exhausted their tool box ... This is difficult to control symptoms ... and difficult families and psychosocial issues ... as well as undecided families as far as their goals of care. So ... I suppose I salivate at the chance to say -- hey this recommendation is what you need!
ReplyDeleteALOKA UST-9126