Adoptive Immunotherapy : Alternative Treatment To Cancer

Adoptive immunotherapy , a cancer treatment which involves immunizing patients with their own diseased cells, much like a measles shot where the patient gain passive immunity first and then maintain it himself.

The experimental method of treatment has been developed at Boston University’s Hubert Humphrey Cancer Research Institute. Each patient receives injections of a substance specifically tailored to his or her tumor. Doctors withdraw a blood sample and then separate out the lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell which fight foreign elements in the body. The lymphocytes are placed in a test tube and treated with cancerous cells drawn from the patient’s tumor. The treated lymphocytes are then reinjected into the patient, where they generate a targeted action against the cancer growing in the body.

At the same time, the patient receives drugs to neutralise another type of lymphocite, known as the suppressor cell, which left untreated works to neutralise the immune system.

The first clinical trial of the Boston University method was conducted from 1982-85 on 25 terminally-ill patients. Findings showed some positive reaction in about 50 per cent of the patients. The tumors of the three patients with the most positive reactions were reduced in size by half, a condition which lasted as long as 24 months in two , the doctors said. “One patient was still alive three years later, when he should have been dead long ago,” the chief architect of the experimental treatment said. In addition, only three of the patients developed any adverse side effects at all. “A low grade fever that disappeared after a day or two,” the doctor added.

Researchers said the major drawback to the treatment is that it seems to take six to nine months before results start to show up. “Some patients just won’t live that long.” They said the treatment still needs considerable refinement and is “not even close to being approved for the general population.”