Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who treated the dying patient extracted white blood cells, the key component of the immune system, and grew the infection-fighting T cells in the laboratory. The cloned T cells, which had been vastly expanded, were then reinfused to the patient to fight the cancer.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers said they made five billion copies of the cancer-fighting immune cells and then put them all back. Two months later, scans showed the tumors had disappeared.
The man, who has declined to be interviewed by media, is said to be cancer-free even two years after he was treated in July 2005. The man was diagnosed with stage four melanoma, a level of cancer at which death normally occurs within months. The cancer, triggered by sunburn, started in a mole on the skin and had spread to a lymph node in his groin and to his lungs.
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer that causes a large number of deaths each year. The number of such cancers has risen 40 percent rise over past decades. The cancer is caused by intermittent, intense exposure to the sun.
