Yeah science!
[quote]The patients all had B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and had relapsed following chemotherapy. The outlook for patients in this category is typically bleak.
The researchers filtered the patients’ blood for T-cells and engineered them with a virus carrying genetic material that would make them recognize CD19, a protein expressed on the surfaces of B-cells. When put back into the patients, the T-cells were meant to attack the B-cells, whether cancerous or normal. The patients experienced unpleasant and dangerous immune reactions, but four of them, including the one that eventually died of an unrelated blood clot, went into remission.[/quote]
[url=http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34857/title/Immune-System-Kills-Cancer/]Full article[/url]
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That's pretty neat. It's probably too expensive to apply on a large scale, though. I wonder what would happen if they alter the virus so that it only attacks T-cells and inject the virus directly into patients.
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Score for science. Same as the guy who was paralyzed is now walking again due to experimental stem cell treatments.