New hope for lung cancer victims
A pioneering cell therapy which has been shown to significantly reduce or eliminate tumours in mice is for the first time to be tested on humans. Starting early next year a group of 56 participants will begin the treatment which involves 3 infusions of almost a billion cells taken 3 weeks apart. All have been diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer and would normally only be offered palliative care or treatments which might be expected to extend life by a few months.
Lung cancer remains the single most common form of death among cancer victims. Despite some improvements in recent years – due in large part to early detection- survival rates for lung cancer remain low. After 5 years only 15% of victims can expect to survive and only 1 in twenty live beyond 10 years.
The trial is part of a new wave of cell based therapy’s emerging that show great promise. Donor bone marrow stem cells are genetically modified to activate an anti cancer gene and are then expected to seek out and destroy cancer cells.
