I've just been reading this great story from the BBC website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63859184, a proper feel good story as well as being an insight into just how clever medicine has become.
I can only pretend to understand the very basics of what's going on here but it is staggering what we can now achieve - curing the incurable.
Yes it's fantastic, but a part of me reacts to every medical advance with "so what do they bloody well want us to die of then?"
It's a remarkable feat, with many, many potential applications. Your own personalised mercenary army of t-cells.
I'm sure humans will continue to find inventive and novel ways of killing themselves and others.
Emily Whitehead may be a name that comes to be as recognised as Louise Brown. The first CAR-T recipient who has now lived 10 years cancer-free.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR_T_cell
FDA have approved five CAR-T therapies thus far for various blood cancers.
This advance is an incremental step for CAR-T therapy with the novel gene therapy editing method (others are available like CRISP-Cas9). Removal of CD7 and then killing CD7 positive cells is neat.
I hope she does as well as Emily
As a feel good story this is lovely but it's a bit premature. This is a 1 off patient and as Tired says is basically a next iteration of the field. There was a similar article back in 2015
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34731498
This is an area I work in have just reading the abstract, the patient had the CAR-T to get her in remission for a bone marrow transplant.
There was a documentary a couple of years ago which covers the subject really well
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006nzt
If you keep an eye out the GOSH PR team get these articles out at this time of year as the prelim data is presented at a conference.
I have just heard this story on the radio as well, its like 1 patient having a COVID vaccine and not getting COVID and Boris announcing the pandemic is over!
Every time I see a reference to T cells I just think of T Virus.
I thought it was where you locked up a Yorkshireman.
