Gene Therapy Reprogrammes Immune Cells to Defeat Hard-to-Treat Cancer

The United Kingdom has used a pioneering gene therapy that reprogrammes immune cells to hunt cancer, helping patients with previously untreatable blood cancer achieve lasting remission.

“A few years ago, this would have been science fiction,” said Waseem Qasim, professor of cell and gene therapy at University College London.

Doctors treated nine children and two adults with T-cell leukaemia by taking healthy donor T cells and precisely editing a single letter of their DNA so they can recognise and destroy cancer cells without being rejected by the body. The therapy acts as a “living drug”, multiplying inside patients and continuing to patrol for cancer, with most participants entering deep remission and seven still disease-free after three years, offering new hope for the roughly 20% of patients who do not respond to conventional treatments.