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So, today on tv, I was watching the news. It then came up that some guy in America had skin cancer. They said that they cured it by taking out some of his white cells, and adding some sort of drug thingy to it. Injecting it back into him, the white cells with the drugs in them faught the cancer. The cancer had two things to fight back, and soon lost.

Now in Britain they tried the same thing. This other guy has an advanced skin cancer. They are trying the same thing, just they did things a little differently. He hopes that it will cure the cancer.

Discuss;
What if this cures different types of cancer?
What if what happened to the guy in America was just an ounce of luck?

I'll look. o:

EDIT: Okay, I found this.

Doctors have successfully rid a patient of advanced skin cancer by treating him with clones of his own immune cells.

In just two months, scans showed that the 52-year-old man’s tumours, which had spread to his lungs, were gone. But the US scientists were quick to point out that the breakthrough involved just one patient and further trials will be needed to prove that the results were no fluke.

Advanced malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, is notoriously difficult to treat once it starts to spread.

The US team, led by Dr Cassian Yee, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, pioneered a new therapy based on infection-fighting “helper” CD4 T-cells from the patient’s own immune system. Helper T-cells are specialised white blood cells that “target” foreign invaders or cancerous cells, and marshal other elements of the immune system against them.

The new technique involved extracting helper T-cells from the patient and cloning those specifically targeting melanoma. They were then stimulated to divide and multiply in the laboratory, boosting their numbers 3,000 to 5,000-fold.

Around five billion of the lab-grown cells were then infused back into the patient, unaccompanied by any additional therapies.

After two months the patient was found to be tumour-free, and there was still no sign of cancer when he was last checked two years later.

Before treatment, the man had Stage 4 advanced melanoma which had spread to a groin lymph node and one of his lungs.

Dr Yee said: “We were surprised by the anti-tumour effect of these CD4 T-cells and its duration of response. For this patient we were successful, but we would need to confirm the effectiveness of therapy in a larger study.”

The patient had a specific type of immune system, and tumour cells producing a specific “antigen” - the protein equivalent of a “flag” that is recognised by the helper T-cells.

Dr Yee predicted that if the approach proved successful in other patients, it could be used for the 25 per cent of late-stage melanoma sufferers sharing the same profile as the trial patient.

Even though only 50 [per cent to 75 per cent of the tumour cells bore the specific antigen“flag” recognised by the T-cells, all the cancer regressed after the treatment.

The treatment may have caused the patient’s immune system to broaden out and recognise other tumour antigens, said the scientists. Follow-up tests revealed T-cell responses to two additional tumour antigens.

great information you got! Much better than the article I found later that evening.

I think it's incredible that they are using the T-cells to attack the cancer cells, but I'm also of the opinion that more research is needed because it could be just a fluke.
The article I read also said that the research team has lost contact with the individual and that he doesn't want any media attention. That is unfortunate because I think it is important to see how he is doing and if there are any side effects or other health issues that may have developed.

I think that it should definately be researched further. I'm also interested in why it didn't work on the other people they tried it on. In a purely scientific way, there are no failures if we can learn more about the topic we are working on.
Anyway, I'd just like to know how the T-cells reacted in those that were not siccesfuly treated.
It would be great if the research that the scientists did pan out and help cure cancer.