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'Living Drug' That Fights Cancer By Harnessing Immune System Clears Key Hurdle
July 12, 20176:08 PM ET
ROB STEIN
A new kind of cancer treatment that uses genetically engineered cells from a patient's immune system to attack their cancer easily cleared a crucial hurdle Wednesday.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee unanimously recommended that the agency approve this "living drug" approach for children and young adults who are fighting a common form of leukemia. The agency doesn't have to follow the committee's recommendation but usually does.
The treatment takes cells from a patient's body, modifies the genes, and then reinfuses those modified cells back into the person who has cancer. If the agency approves, it would mark the first time the FDA has approved anything considered to be a "gene therapy product."
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"This is the most exciting thing I've seen in my lifetime," said Dr. Timothy Cripe, an oncologist at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
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For years, scientists have tried to use drugs that stimulate the immune system to fight cancer, and have had only modest success.
In recent years, however, scientists developed a new generation of "immunotherapy" drugs that have produced impressive results for a wide range of cancers by unleashing the body's natural defense system.
The new treatment is known as CAR-T cell immunotherapy. It works by removing key immune system cells known as T cells from the patient so scientists can genetically modify them to seek out and attack only cancer cells. That's why some scientists refer to this as a "living drug."
Doctors then infuse millions of the genetically modified T cells back into the patient's body so they can try to obliterate the cancer cells and hopefully leave healthy tissue unscathed.
...
July 12, 20176:08 PM ET
ROB STEIN
A new kind of cancer treatment that uses genetically engineered cells from a patient's immune system to attack their cancer easily cleared a crucial hurdle Wednesday.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee unanimously recommended that the agency approve this "living drug" approach for children and young adults who are fighting a common form of leukemia. The agency doesn't have to follow the committee's recommendation but usually does.
The treatment takes cells from a patient's body, modifies the genes, and then reinfuses those modified cells back into the person who has cancer. If the agency approves, it would mark the first time the FDA has approved anything considered to be a "gene therapy product."
...
"This is the most exciting thing I've seen in my lifetime," said Dr. Timothy Cripe, an oncologist at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
...
For years, scientists have tried to use drugs that stimulate the immune system to fight cancer, and have had only modest success.
In recent years, however, scientists developed a new generation of "immunotherapy" drugs that have produced impressive results for a wide range of cancers by unleashing the body's natural defense system.
The new treatment is known as CAR-T cell immunotherapy. It works by removing key immune system cells known as T cells from the patient so scientists can genetically modify them to seek out and attack only cancer cells. That's why some scientists refer to this as a "living drug."
Doctors then infuse millions of the genetically modified T cells back into the patient's body so they can try to obliterate the cancer cells and hopefully leave healthy tissue unscathed.
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