Encouraging outcome presented in International cancer immunotherapy meeting

Ovarian cancer treated with immunotherapy

CHENNAI: A 54-year-old woman, suffering from the last stages of ovarian cancer, has been treated successfully using a Japanese technology.

The treatment showed that the cancer, which had spread to the liver and spleen, had stopped growing and other growths had shrunk in size.

Dr Samuel JK Abraham of the Nichi-In Centre for Regenerative Medicine (NCRM) presented a paper on this clinical work at the Second International Immunotherapy Congress held in Budapest, Hungary.

An Indo-Japan venture, NCRM claims to be the only place in India that offers this treatment.

The woman in the study had been treated for cancer in June 2009, but she had a relapse in July 2010. With limited options, she was administered Autologous Immune Enhancement Therapy (AIET) in addition to chemotherapy.

This involves taking Natural Killer (NK) cells from the patient’s blood and multiplying them in a lab. NK cells are meant to curb cancer.

When there is no balance between cancer-causing cells and NK cells, the disease develops. Once the NK cells are multiplied, they are re-injected into the patient to destroy the rogue cells.

In a release, Dr Abraham said, “One of the major advantages with our methodology is that we do not use any allogenic or other types of feeder layer, but use only the patient’s own serum for growing the NK cells, which has added advantages of safety.”

This therapy has been in clinical practice in Japan since 1990. The technology for multiplication of the NK cells was developed by Dr Hiroshi Terunuma of the Biotherapy Institute of Japan, who is a co-author of this clinical work.

According to the press release, the woman now continues with her daily routine and has shown “significant improvement.