Cancer Cure on the Way? Gene Therapy Shows High Promise and Could Be Approved in U.S.

A surefire way to stop cancer may be closer than previously expected, as gene therapy is showing very promising results thus far.

According to the Associated Press, several research groups have successfully treated leukemia and other forms of blood cancer by making patients' blood cells fight the disease. At least six research groups have reported that about 120 patients with certain blood and bone marrow cancers who began this gene therapy treatment years ago are cancer-free today.

"It's really exciting," said Dr. Janis Abkowitz, blood diseases chief at the University of Washington in Seattle and president of the American Society of Hematology. "You can take a cell that belongs to a patient and engineer it to be an attack cell."

An eight-year-old patient was the first child in one study to receive the gene therapy treatment. Doctors said the young girl's cancer was so advanced some of her organs would begin to fail. Two years after beginning gene therapy treatment, she experienced no signs of cancer.

In that study, all five adults and 19 of 22 children with leukemia saw their cancer go into complete remission after beginning treatment. In only a small few did the cancer relapse. Still, some of the patients were trying gene therapy as a last resort, having gone through numerous bone marrow transplants and chemotherapies.

Some doctor's believe this treatment will be the first gene therapy approved in the U.S. and the first meant for cancer worldwide. One such treatment exists in Europe, but it is meant for a rare metabolic disease.

The gene therapy treatment alters the body's cells to fight cancer. The treatment removes millions of white blood cells, known as T-cells, alters them to include a gene that targets and destroys cancer and then re-administers them to the patient's body.

"From our vantage point, this looks like a major advance," Lee Greenberger, chief scientific officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, said. "We are seeing powerful responses... and time will tell how enduring these remissions turn out to be."