https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63859184
"All other treatments for Alyssa's leukaemia had failed.
So doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital used "base editing" to perform a
feat of biological engineering to build her a new living drug.
Six months later the cancer is undetectable, but Alyssa is still being
monitored in case it comes back.
Alyssa, who is 13 and from Leicester, was diagnosed with T-cell acute
lymphoblastic leukaemia in May last year.
T-cells are supposed to be the body's guardians - seeking out and destroying
threats - but for Alyssa they had become the danger and were growing out of
control.
Her cancer was aggressive. Chemotherapy, and then a bone-marrow transplant,
were unable to rid it from her body.
Without the experimental medicine, the only option left would have been merely
to make Alyssa as comfortable as possible.
"Eventually I would have passed away," said Alyssa. Her mum, Kiona, said this
time last year she had been dreading Christmas, "thinking this is our last with
her". And then she "just cried" through her daughter's 13th birthday in
January.
What happened next would have been unthinkable just a few years ago and has
been made possible by incredible advances in genetics.
The team at Great Ormond Street used a technology called base editing, which
was invented only six years ago."
Via Garry Knight.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
