Baby suffering from leukaemia is first in the world to be saved by designer immune cells

London:

A British baby has become the first in the world to recover from leukaemia through a ground-breaking treatment which creates designer immune cells to fight cancer.

Doctors had given up hope of saving Layla Richards, now 17 months, after she failed to respond to chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant.

But when her parents, Lisa Foley and Ashleigh Richards, begged Great Ormond Street Hospital to try anything, they agreed to attempt a new therapy.

A team of scientists and doctors took donor immune cells and used a genetic editing technique to remove some genes and create specialised killer cells which could eradicate her leukaemia.

The treatment had only ever been tried in mice and required emergency permission from health regulators and the hospital’s ethics committee.

Now, only months later, Layla is free of cancer and back home. Doctors are hopeful that she is cured but want to wait a year or two to be sure. Professor Paul Veys, director of the London hospital’s bone-marrow transplant unit, said: “We didn’t know if or when it work. Her leukaemia was so aggressive that such a response is almost a miracle. She’s a very tough little girl.”

Layla was only 14 weeks old when a blood test showed she had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Doctors described it as “one of the most aggressive cases we have ever seen”. She underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant but the cancer kept returning and eventually consultants told her parents it was “hopeless” as there were no treatments left. “We didn’t want to accept palliative care and give up on our daughter,” said Miss Foley, of Enfield, north London. “We asked the doctors to try anything.” Unknown to the family, the consultants had been working with University College London on the new treatment. It works by tweaking the DNA of donor immune cells so they will only target leukaemia and will not be rejected by the recipient. The team believe the technique could help fight many other cancers and inherited diseases. Waseem Qasim, professor of cell and gene therapy ad UCL and a consultant immunologist at Great Ormond Street, said: “This is a landmark in the use of new gene engineering technology.” Dr Matt Kaiser, head of research at Bloodwise, a cancer charity, said: “This new type of ‘off-the-shelf’ T-cell therapy could represent a significant advance.”

— The Daily Telegraph