Doctors call cancer patients cured after gene therapy a decade ago

In a study published Wednesday, doctors from the University of Pennsylvania said cancer in two patients is not detectable more than a decade after a treatment known as CAR T cell therapy.

An early trial of the CAR T treatment was conducted in 2010 on three patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The therapy removes the white blood cells that fight viruses from a patient’s body in order to genetically engineer them to fight cancer before infusing them back into the patient’s circulation, The New York Times reported. 

“We thought they would be gone in a month or two,” Carl June, the trial’s principal investigator, told the Times of the cells used in the treatment.

But on Wednesday, June, along with J. Joseph Melenhorst and David Porter, published a report in Nature saying that the cancer in two of the patients in the trial was gone, and the CAR T cells were still in their bloodstreams.

“CAR T cells remained detectable more than ten years after infusion, with sustained remission in both patients,” the report said. 

“I’m doing great right now. I’m still very active. I was running half marathons until 2018,” 75-year-old Doug Olson, one of the patients in the trial, told The Associated Press. “This is a cure. And they don’t use the word lightly.”

The CAR T treatment has also been known to cause serious side effects including high fevers, comas, extremely low blood pressure and death. The treatment type has not yet been successful on solid tumor forms of cancer such as those found in breast and prostate cancer patients, the Times added.

“Now we can finally say the word ‘cure’ with CAR T cells,” June added to the Times.