October 25, 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Salis-
Silverman The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Phone: (267)
426-6063 Philadelphia, Oct. 17, 2011 — The Children’s Hospital
of Philadelphia is now enrolling pediatric cancer patients in an
innovative clinical trial that programs the immune system to
attack blood cancers. In this study, called the CART19 trial,
researchers will modify a child’s own T cells to attack specific
types of cancer in their B cells. The new Phase 1 pediatric
trial has just begun to enroll a very small number of children
with B cell cancers — B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)
and B cell lymphoma — that resist standard treatment. “After
impressive progress against childhood leukemia beginning more
than 30 years ago, cure rates have recently reached a plateau,”
said pediatric oncologist Stephan A. Grupp, MD, PhD, the
principal investigator of the CART19 trial at Children’s
Hospital. “By harnessing a child’s own immune cells to attack
the cancer, this immunotherapy app