The hospital that holds the key for Zac's treatment
It is the only US hospital devoted exclusively to the care of children, and it holds the key to Zac Oliver's chances of survival.
The Broseley four-year-old's mum, Hannah Oliver-Willets, discovered the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and its revolutionary CAR T-cell therapy when she began desperately searching for a way to cure her son.
The American hospital has gained a reputation for the treatment, which it pioneered in 2012.
Since then it has treated more than 250 patients with the therapy.
Doctors at the hospital say the 17-week CAR T-cell therapy would give Zac a 60 to 80 per cent chance of survival, as opposed to less than 25 per cent if he continues with chemotherapy or has a bone marrow transplant, which are the only options available to him in Britain.
Game-changer
Announcing the licensing of the treatment by the US Food and Drug Administration the hospital described it as a "game changer" for patients.
The treatment modifies patients’ own immune T cells, which are collected and reprogrammed to potentially seek and destroy the patients’ leukemia cells.
After being infused back into patients’ bodies, these newly built “hunter” cells both multiply and attack, targeting cells that express a protein called CD19.
Tests have revealed that the army of hunter cells can grow to more than 100,000 new cells for each single engineered cell patients receive, producing high remission rates in completely refractory leukaemia – and can survive in the body for years.
Carl June, MD, is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies in the Abramson Cancer Centre.
He said: “This is a turning point in the fight against B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia that opens up opportunities for patients across the world who desperately need new options.
“We’re excited and proud to have moved this CAR therapy, in collaboration with Novartis and CHOP, through all phases of development and clinical trials, established its efficacy, and now extended its reach to children across the country under this FDA approval,” he added.
“We hope the momentum behind the technology builds as we continue to investigate the abilities of personalised cellular therapeutics in blood cancers and solid tumours to help patients with many other types of cancer.”
