Leukemia vs.Nature’s “Weapon of Mass Destruction”

Leukemia and other cancers are at the forefront of many peoples' minds due to such a high prevalence in modern life. It is especially at the minds of patients, caregivers, and doctors. One such case is that of Layla Richards

Layla Richards with her parents, Lisa Foley and Ashleigh Richards, and her sister, Reya PA

     Layla was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, the most common form of childhood leukaemia, at 14 weeks old. Leukemia is cancer of the blood.She went through several rounds of chemotherapy and had a bone morrow transplant, but weeks later her cancer had returned. Her mother Lisa Foley said, “We didn’t want to accept palliative care and so we asked the doctors to try anything for our daughter, even if it hadn’t been tried before.”

     Her doctor from Great Ormond Street in London was soon calling Cellectis, a biotechnology company in east Manhattan. Cellectis uses a gene-editing method called TALENs to create T cells, or white blood cells that are made specifically to fight leukemia cells. The hospital had a vial of these cells inside of their freezer, however they were only made for quality-control testing and had only been tested on mice.

     Cellectis began development of this treatment in 2011 when it was discovered that you could alter the DNA of T-cells (a specific white blood cell) and point it at the cells that are altered by leukemia. This has other applications, but the difficult part lies in pointing the T-cells at the right target. If done wrong, then the T-cells could target the working cells of the patients body.

     Layla was announced as being cured of her cancer, and although some cancer experts are hesitant to attribute the victory to the technology used to modify T-cells, evidence does point that way. Hopefully in the future we will see more advances in immune engineering that lead to curing further diseases.

Based off of an article from MIT Technology Review: Immune Engineering.
For more on Layla's case see the article: Layla Richards: One-year-old girl becomes world's first person to receive therapy to cure 'incurable' cancer