Leukemia Cure Found? Designer Immune Cells Clear Baby's Cancer

British baby Layla Richards had miraculously survived from a deadly disease. She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and what she had was the aggressive type. Doctors have already briefed her parents to be ready for the worst thing that could happen to her since she can't be cured anymore.

The doctors even said that her case was one of the worst that they had ever seen. Despite this pronouncement, Layla's parents did not give up but continued to seek for a possible cure instead.

As stated in Reuters by Paul Veys, the professor who led the team treating Layla, "Her leukemia was so aggressive that such a response is almost a miracle. As this was the first time that the treatment had been used, we didn't know if or when it would work, so we were over the moon when it did."

With the insistence of the Richards family, they were able to find something that can possibly make Layla better. The problem is, the treatment has not yet been tried on humans. In short, the "cure" has only been tested in the lab, using mice as its recipients.

The treatment

The doctors treating Layla at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London explained this experimental drug to her parents and they agreed to give it a try, just to save their beloved daughter.

The breakthrough drug makes use of the "molecular scissors," a gene-editing method that can control the immune cells and direct it to fight off the bad cancer cells. Further, it produces "designer immune cells" that are set to seek and quash the leukemia.

This drug, called TALEN, is the outcome of strict research of doctors at the UCL Institute of Child's Health (ICH) and the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). These institutions are working as a team to develop treatments for the most uncommon diseases of children.

With the success of using this drug, does it mean that it will work on children with the same illness and be implemented from now on?

"We have only used this treatment on one very strong little girl, and we have to be cautious about claiming this will be a suitable treatment option for all children," said Waseem Qasim, professor of cell and gene therapy at University College London's (UCL) Institute of Child Health, and a consultant immunologist at GOSH, as quoted by The Guardian.

"But this is a landmark in the use of new gene engineering technology and the effects for this child have been staggering," the professor ended.