New Treatment "Cures" Leukemia

[crashhelmet]

7 year old Emma Whitehead was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Doctors tried an experimental therapy resulted in reprogramming her immune system to fight the cancer cells. The root of that cure? HIV

Doctors "disabled" the portion of HIV that causes AIDS and used it to modify her own T Cells to fight the cancer cells. Using one killer to kill another.

From the Inquisitor

Another article from the Inquisitor about the treatment itself

The only thing that bothers me is This Article about it

Neither the article nor the embedded video make any mention whatsoever that the root of the treatment was HIV.

I can understand that they may suppress it to keep people from freaking out about it, but the information should still be shared.

[anakhouri]

The last article seems very feel-good, huggy-snuggy, and is on a website for parents. I assume they thought mentioning HIV would ruin the mood? It is rather disturbing to think some people would read this article, be filled with hope for their own sick kid, then freak out when they find out what was used...

I am aware that viruses can be reprogrammed and can be disabled so they can't replicate (which is done often in labs where scientists are experimenting with potenitally dangerous viruses like HIV or HPV), but my husband does this pretty regularly as he is a research scientist. Most people probably aren't aware this is possible.


Trivia: HIV is a low biosafety level virus (it's like a 2 out of 5 or something, 5 being guys in clean suits behind glass handling stuff with gloves) because it dies very quickly when removed from a host.

[HYHYBT]

The thing that bothers me is that, if I remember rightly, HIV modifies *itself* pretty fast. It's easy to imagine a harmless version turning harmful again... on the other hand, given modern treatments, even if that happened you'd still be better off than with leukemia.

[Nyoibo]

The thing that bothers me is that, if I remember rightly, HIV modifies *itself* pretty fast. It's easy to imagine a harmless version turning harmful again... on the other hand, given modern treatments, even if that happened you'd still be better off than with leukemia.

It does that through replication, evolving and adapting, if it is incapable of replicating it can't do that.

[HYHYBT]

Good to know.

[AccountingDrone]

My sister was a lab rat for some steroid + something else for leukemia at Sloan-Kettering back in 1966 and had a fairly painful final year for her life. It would have been nice to have some alternative treatments instead of the steroids that made her final time hell. All my memories of her were of a very sick stranger [her face was all puffed up, all her hair had fallen out and she just didn't look like my sister.]