Hope for people with skin cancer

Writing in Science magazine , the National Cancer Institute team said they had changed the cells

Mark Origer, 53, is one of two patients who have recovered from cancer (Photo: AP)

immune reports from patients, help cells have higher resistance.

Gene therapy is the last hope of 17 patients participating in this clinical trial. Skin cancer has spread all over their bodies, and traditional treatments do not work.

This new therapy is based on the idea that the human body's natural defense mechanisms can be energized to fight cancer.

To do this, scientists at the National Cancer Institute in the United States removed a white blood cell from the patient. In the laboratory, a virus is used to transfer new genes into these cells. It enhances the patient's ability to recognize and fight cancer.

Hope

When doctors injected these new cells into patients, they found that patients began to have more energy before cancer.

In two patients, new therapy proved extremely successful, wiping out cancer from the body. These two are still alive, and after 18 months, completely cured.

According to Dr. Steven Rosenberg, who led the study, this is a great improvement."For the first time we report on the ability to change genes in immune system cells, turning them into cells that can attack and destroy cancer." But there is still caution . This is only a small-scale trial, and in the remaining 15 patients, the measure is not effective.

Although researchers know that this is not a miraculous remedy, they are optimistic that the new measure has helped prevent cancer cells in the body. They believe this gene therapy can be modified to help treat other types of cancer.