Dr Martin Pule’ (above, right), a Maltese doctor and blood specialist working in the United Kingdom, has spent the past ten years along with other blood specialists, engineering CAR T-cell therapy, a new leukaemia treatment.
War in Blood, a BBC film, looks into the work of Pule’ and the other scientists at University College London working together on the immunotherapy trials.
Speaking to Times of London, Pule’, a clinical scientist at UCL Cancer Institute who has pioneered in the UCL CAR-T cell programme, said that such the programme is a “revolutionary new approach in treating cancer.”
Chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) T-cell therapy, has been described as a groundbreaking type of immunotherapy, which involves using a patients’ immune cells to the treat their cancer condition.
A patient’s T-cells, which form part of the immune system, are genetically modified in a laboratory so they produce a special structure called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs. The CAR T-cells are then infused back into the patient’s bloodstream. Once the CAR T-cells are back in the patient’s body, Pule’ compares them to ‘little robots’ looking for infected cells and killing them.
A single genetically altered T-cell can destroy up to 100,000 cancer cells. Pule’, who has headed the largest European clinical trials into immune cells, says it is an area of medical research that has exploded in the past decade
So far, CAR T-cell therapy has been found to work only for certain types of blood cancers, and it is already provided on the NHS for children and young adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. It has been said that CAR-T cell therapy has transformed survival rates for children and young adults with the condition; although it does not work for everyone, and certain studies show the treatment successful in less than 50 per cent of patients.
Pule’ explains that there are a number of side-effects, when the T-cells are unable to indicate the leukaemia anymore. “In general, the experience depends on how much disease is on board, and on average, people undergoing it have a bad case of a flu-like syndrome with a high temperature and shaking.”
When asked whether CAR T-cell treatment could replace chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer, Dr Pule’ reflected that although the field is still young, the possibility is real. “It’s challenging to reach that point, but we are closer.”
He adds that, although there is a lot of regulatory stuff and technical bureaucracy to overcome, there is a great amount of work being done in the field.” He adds that his inspiration to continue working comes from the patients, those patients who continue to strive before and after the treatment. “We heard from one of them just the other day and they had run a marathon,” Pule’ says. “These people are amazing.’
BBC documentary: War in the Blood
War in the Blood, will be airing at 9pm (10pm, Malta time) on July 7 on BBC Two, and follows two patients, Mahmoud, 18 and Graham, 52, through their CAR-T cell treatment. The documentary was filmed over two years at University College Hospital and UCL, follows not just the patients through their treatment, but also the doctors who are battling to save their lives.
Read more in link
here and in articles
here