I was introduced to a video at Atlas, a THON org here, in which a little girl, Emily, with acute lymphoblastic leukemia is cured by using a modified HIV virus. However, I’m sure this seems a little alarming for a lot of people, so I decided to look a little further into the topic. Emily was part of a small clinical trial. But, this concept is not completely new. Studies and experiments on this idea have been going on for about a decade.
Basically, what the doctors do is take the T-Cells which are immune cells in the cancer patients, and inject them with a modified virus which the purpose is to attack the cancer cells and kill them that way. The idea is great in theory because our own immune systems can, in theory, be made to attack the disease that our bodies create on its own. Cancer researchers are spending time trying to figure out why our immune systems can’t recognize these tumors growing and how to make the immune system fight them, hence this trial.
So far, it has cured Emily, two out of three adults in one trial, nine out of twelve in another, and five of five in one more reported.
After Andrew’s lesson in class the other day about pediatric cancer and the ethicality of using children in trials. I thought about this topic using his teachings. Although the results seem promising, a lot more research will have to be done in order to consider this to be a more widespread treatment for leukemia, rather than just an experimental drug. Double-blind placebo trials could be used in order to further test the effectiveness of this treatment. It would be ethical to use patients in trials because cancer drugs have been shown, on average, to have a 50% chance of working or killing the patient, so receiving the drug or not receiving the drug gives you the same chance of not doing anything, vs working to cure/killing the patient. I’m sure in the upcoming years we will see how this treatment plays out.
I liked this post a lot! What is true is that there is infinitive things out there that we ignore. And who knew that HIV can cure cancer? That`s just reflects how amazing is the world and that the science is more complex and has a lot to offer. I can totally see the connection with Andrew`s lesson in class, what it scares the most is that whethever or not the doctors are doing the right experiment and whethever or not the results are correct. Only time will say what is gonna happen.
Wow! That is so remarkable! I just watched the video and really felt positively effected by it. I have attached a link to the website of the foundation that has taken part in providing funding for these studies. As with anything else funding is critical to this cause. I hope with the breakthrough you spoke of above more funding will be given to this project and therefor an increased chance of seeing if this really works.
http://www.acgtfoundation.org