Breakthrough: Leukemia Cured with HIV virus

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The world of medicine witnessed a new medical breakthrough: a 7 year old girl was miraculously healed from a serious form of leukemia with a disabled form of HIV.

Emma Whitehead was diagnosed with acute form leukemia and she underwent every conventional treatment for long two years. The parents were really desperate at that point, so they agreed to enroll their daughter into an experimental program. 

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have perfected a treatment that will reprogram the immune system, so it will destroy every cancer cell in the body. The treatment is extremely hard, and it almost killed the little girl. But, miraculously, she resisted to the harsh cure. Moreover, her aggressive form of leukemia was cured.

7 months after that treatment phase passed and Emma's condition is still in remission. She was not the only girl who tried this, and the experimental treatment showed amazing results in more adults. The scientists who developed this treatment think that their discovery will gradually replace the known treatment: the bone marrow transplantation - a difficult procedure that remains a last hope for patients with leukemia.

How does the revolutionary treatment work


The doctors remove millions of T cells and adds new genes into them, programming them to destroy the affected B cells of the immune system. The technique involves a disabled form of HIV which turned out to be very good for transporting genetic material in the T cells. Modified T cells are then reintroduced into the patients' veins, they multiply and begin to destroy the affected tissue. The disadvantage of this form of treatment is that modified cells attack both cancerous and healthy tissues, so patients will become more sensitive and can develop certain infections. 

image source: khoahoc.com.vn

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