Topic: New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations'
Doctors have treated only three leukemia patients, but the
sensational results from a single shot could be one of the most
significant advances in cancer research in decades. And it
almost never happened. In the research published Wednesday,
doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say the treatment made
the most common type of leukemia completely disappear in two of
the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third. In each
of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue
completely melted away in a few weeks, and a year later it is
still gone. The results of the preliminary test “exceeded our
wildest expectations,” says immunologist Dr. Carl June a member
of the Abramson Cancer Center's research team. Dr. Edgar
Engleman, a cancer immunologist at Stanford University School of
Medicine who was not involved in the research calls the results
“remarkable ... great stuff.” The Penn scientists targeted
chroniclymphocytic leukemia (CLL), t