"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 biological miracle engineeringand to make a new living medicine. 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 T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in May last year. Her cancer was very aggressive. Chemotherapy, and then a bone marrow transplant, could not rid her of the disease.
But the Great Ormond Street team used a technology called core processing ή base editing, η οποία εφευρέθηκε μόλις πριν από έξι χρόνια και επιτρέπει στους επιστήμονες να κάνουν ζουμ σε ένα ακριβές μέρος του γενετικού code. They can then change the molecular structure of a single base, turning it into another and changing its genetic instructions. A large team of doctors and scientists used this 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 clinical trial.
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 applying the technology to cancer “only shows us the bare minimum of what basic treatment can achieve… There are already trials showingwork basis in sickle cell disease, as well as high cholesterol that runs in families, and for the blood disorder beta-thalassemia."
