As part of an international trial, a 59-year-old patient received an autograft of white blood cells reprogrammed to attack cancer cells.
- In a 59-year-old patient who was not operable, an autograft of reprogrammed lymphocytes was performed
- This technique is already used in the treatment of blood cancers
It is one of the most aggressive cancers and affects an increasing number of patients in France, where 10,000 new cases are recorded per year. Liver cancer, when diagnosed at an early stage, can be treated by removing the tumour, but for more advanced forms, treatments are based on chemotherapy or targeted therapies. This cancer is among the most dangerous and ranks fifth in terms of mortality.
The teams from the University Hospital of Rennes and the Center Eugène Marquis, within the framework of an international trial, are testing a new cellular immunotherapy treatment called TCR-T cells: it aims, specifies AFP, to genetically reprogram white blood cells of the patient to attack cancer cells. This technique, which would only be intended for cases of inoperable liver cancer, has been used in Rennes since 2020 on a 59-year-old patient with hepatocarcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer and also the one that causes the greatest number of deaths, in which conventional treatments have not reduced the disease.
Lymphocytes reprogrammed in the laboratory and reinjected into the blood
“We take the white blood cells that are able to recognize microbes and attack them and these are reprogrammed in the laboratory in the United States so that they can recognize, using a small receptor with which they are equipped at their surface, the targeted cancer cells before being reinjected into the patient’s blood”, explains Professor Roch Houot of the Rennes University Hospital.
This treatment, about which the Rennes team considers “it is too early to speak of efficacy”, was developed thanks to a collaboration with hematology departments which use this technique of cellular immunotherapy in cancers. so-called “liquid” blood such as leukemia and lymphoma. In the case of the patient treated in Rennes who is regularly monitored, prior chemotherapy was necessary to prepare his bone marrow so that the autograft of reprogrammed white blood cells would be accepted by his body.
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