A trial looking at a technique that uses your own white blood cells to treat your cancer

Cancer type:

All cancer types

Status:

Results

Phase:

Pilot

This trial was looking at a way of encouraging your own white blood cells to attack cancer cells in your body. It was for people who had any of the following conditions that could not be treated with other standard treatments Open a glossary item available at the time.

Hodgkin lymphoma
Nasopharyngeal cancer
Any other cancer that was known to carry a virus called Epstein Barr (EBV)
A condition called post transplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD) that is caused by the Epstein Barr virus
Melanoma
Prostate Cancer

The researchers were trying to develop a new technique that involved using some of your own white blood cells called T cells. T cells are part of the immune system. The researchers removed some T cells from your blood and then in the laboratory tried to grow T cells that would attack your cancer cells.

The aim of this study was to see if they could safely give back the treated T cells and if they boosted the immune system.

Summary of results

The study team were able to grow such T cells in the laboratory from 16 out of 27 patients and they successfully gave treated cells back to 6 of them. The other patients did not receive their cells because they were not well enough. Patients received up to 3 doses of T cells and none of them had any serious side effects.

By looking at blood samples, the researchers could see that the treated cells stayed in the circulation for up to 2 weeks. In one person, they could still detect the treated T cells a few months later.

In this study, cancer did not respond to this type of treatment, but the researchers are continuing to study this in the laboratory. They hope they may be able to test this technique in people again in the future.

We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. As far as we are aware, the information they sent us has not been reviewed independently (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) or published in a medical journal yet. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.