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Cancer patient cured with his own immune system - health - 19...

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A cure for cancer teems through our veins, but the trick is harnessing the immune system's tumour-destroying cells, say doctors.

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Now, a US team has developed a new way to turn a patient's T-cells against a deadly, metastasised skin cancer. A 55-year old man who received the immune boost lives tumour-free, more than two years after treatment.

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Other cancer experts say the results could pave the road for a cancer vaccine, but more proof with additional patients is needed.

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But researchers have slowly learned how to unleash this response. The most common strategy is to collect a patient’s white blood cells, grow the tumour-killing T-cells in a laboratory incubator and inject them back into the patient.

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The researchers isolated a handful of these cells from the patient, whose melanoma had spread to his lung and groin. All the cells recognised a protein called NY-ESO-1 – this existed in his tumour, but not most healthy cells.

After the cells had been multiplying in the lab for two months, Yee’s team injected about five billion of them into the patient in one dose.

The treatment annihilated the tumours within two months, and nearly two years later, there are no signs that the patient’s cancer has crept back, Yee says.

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The treatment annihilated the tumours within two months, and nearly two years later, there are no signs that the patient’s cancer has crept back, Yee says.

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The lab-grown cells remained at high levels for at least three months after treatment. However, Yee suspects that the injected CD4-cells also jolted other immune cells into action because tumour cells that didn’t make NY-ESO-1 also disappeared.

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the new treatment might work for only a fraction of melanoma patients, because many tumours do not contain NY-ESO-1 and not all patients have an immune system that recognises the protein,

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