You see, doc, but I have so many commitments that there’s no time for me to stop by at your office! – These words are music to the ears of each oncologist, especially Dr. Cohen and his team that has found a way to teach our immune system to recognize certain types of cancer cells and to completely destroy the incurable cancer.
An American woman, who was suffering from advanced leukemia, is alive and well today, even though she was told three years ago that she would live at least for few weeks and doctors gave up treating her. She received a revolutionary treatment, which helped her immune system to identify cancer cells as the enemy of the body, and then become to attack them.
It is a vaccine that stimulates T cells, the cells of our immune system, to recognize malignancy and destroy it on the basis of WT1 protein from the surface of cancer cells.
More than half of the 15 people that were experiencing the terminal stage of leukemia three years ago and received the ‘’smart T cell vaccine’’ are still alive.
So far this treatment approach is tested only on patients suffering from blood cancer, but it is believed that a similar approach might prove effective as well in other types of cancer – breast, ovarian, colon or prostate cancer – which also contain WT1 protein.
Although some experts say that we are on the threshold of a discovery of the universal cancer vaccine, researcher Gunter Cohen, from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, modestly claims that this is not the case yet. Unfortunately a part of the patients did not react to this treatment.
– I really believe that we are on the threshold of a huge discovery that will change everything. My patients have been written off, they were told that they would live for at least a month or two, so they agreed on a new way of therapy knowing that they have nothing to lose. A year later, when I call them at work to ask them how they are and what they do, I often receive the following answer , ” You see, doc, but I have so many commitments , that there’s no time for me stop by at your office! ” – says Dr Cohen.
His method consists of taking the bone marrow of healthy donors and isolating T cells from stem cells. The patient will immediately receive a treatment with stem cells, while T cells are subjected to protein WT1 in the laboratory, until they become sensitive to it and begin to attack it.
Then these modified T cells, are injected in the blood plasma of the patient every few months and the journey to recovery can begin. Of course, there can be side effects, after a while, as the cancer comes back in some patients, but a new round of therapies can surely help again. Moreover, the vaccine has fewer side effects compared to radiation or chemotherapy.
Nowadays, both in the US and in the UK, further clinical research trials of the genetically engineered super – produced immune cells are carried out, because there’s really a new hope on the horizon in the fight against certain really dangerous types of cancer.
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