"A teenage girl's incurable cancer left her body", he says the BBC, "using a revolutionary new type of drug...".
Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital used 'base editing' to perform a bioengineering miracle and make a new living drug. Six months later the cancer was undetectable, but Alyssa is still being monitored in case it comes back.
Alyssa, who is 13 from Leicester, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia leukemia of T-cells (T-cell) in May last year. Her cancer was very aggressive. Chemotherapy, and then a bone marrow transplant, could not rid her of the disease.
Η team του Great Ormond Street όμως χρησιμοποίησε μια τεχνολογία που ονομάζεται βασική επεξεργασία ή base editing, η οποία εφευρέθηκε μόλις πριν από έξι χρόνια και επιτρέπει στους επιστήμονες να κάνουν ζουμ σε ένα ακριβές μέρος του γενετικού κώδικα. Στη συνέχεια μπορούν να αλλάξουν την μοριακή δομή μιας μόνο βάσης, μετατρέποντάς την σε άλλη και αλλάζοντας τις γενετικές της οδηγίες. Μια μεγάλη ομάδα γιατρών και επιστημόνων χρησιμοποίησε αυτό το tool to engineer a new type of T-cell that was capable of hunting down and killing Alyssa's cancerous T-cells.
After a month, Alyssa's cancer was in remission and she was given a second bone marrow transplant to regenerate her immune system. Alyssa is the first of 10 people to receive the drug as part of a clinic essays.
Her mother said that a year ago she was dreading Christmas, "thinking this will be our last with her". But it wasn't.
And the BBC reports that the application of the technology in cancer "only shows us the bare minimum that basic treatment can achieve... There are already trials of basic treatment in sickle cell disease, as well as high cholesterol that runs in families and for the blood disorder beta-thalassemia."
