Cancer Cure News 2017: FDA Approves of New Cancer Treatment Involving White Blood Cells
The world is now one step closer to curing cancer.
According to BBC News, the United States government has now approved of the CAR-T treatment, which uses a cancer patient's own immune system to destroy cancer cells. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the go signal for the revolutionary form of cancer treatment, saying that it was a "historic" decision.
The treatment, also called the "living drug" therapy, showed great numbers and results. Unlike other forms of cancer treatments, this one was customized for each patient.
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The procedure involved extracting white blood cells from the blood of a cancer patient. These were then reprogrammed to attack cancer cells. Once the white blood cells were put back inside the patient, they searched for the cancer cells and began to multiply once found.
Marketed under the name Kymriah, the therapy will be a type of last resort when other treatments like chemotherapy and surgery do not work on a patient. It was designed to work against acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
"We're entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a patient's own cells to attack a deadly cancer," Dr. Scott Gottlieb from the FDA said. "New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine and create an inflection point in our ability to treat and even cure many intractable illnesses."
The treatment has been in the works for a while now and has already cured several cancer patients. Right now, Kymriah does not work on all types of cancer, but the hope is that medical science will continue to break ground on this form of therapy that could possibly save the lives of countless patients.
"We believe this is just the first of what will soon be many new immunotherapy-based treatments for a variety of cancers," said Dr. David Maloney, medical director of cellular immunotherapy at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Stay tuned for the latest news and updates.
