Penn's Abramson Cancer Center - medical breakthrough

Involves modified "t" cells

Did you know… 

that researchers from Penn's Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine have made a cancer treatment breakthrough involving modified t cells? The team of doctors and scientists has shown sustained remissions of up to a year among a small group of advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells as a follow up to chemotherapy. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine, are the first demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to create "serial killer" T cells aimed at cancerous tumors.

"Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected," said Carl June, MD, director of Translational Research and a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Abramson Cancer Center, who led the work. "It worked much better than we thought it would."

The research team is hopeful that this advance in cancer medicine will help to provide a tumor-attack roadmap for the treatment of other cancers including those of the lung and ovaries and myeloma and melanoma.

Visit the Perelman School of Medicine press release page for more detail information about this breakthrough.