Emily Whitehead: girl whose cancer was 'cured' by HIV
A seven-year-old girl has become the first child leukaemia patient to be successfully treated by doctors using a disabled form of the virus that causes Aids to reprogramme the immune system.
Emily Whitehead Photo: UNIVERSAL NEWS AND SPORT
7:50PM GMT 11 Dec 2012
When chemotherapy failed to work for Emily
Whitehead, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, she
underwent a new experimental treatment at The Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia.
It involved tricking her immune system into fighting the cancer cells - and,
six months later, Emily remains in remission.
She was one of a dozen people to have had the treatment. Three adults also had
complete remissions, with two of them now clear of cancer for more than two
years.
Four other adults showed improvements but did not go into complete remission.
One child improved but then relapsed, and the treatment did not work for two
adults.
The patients each had millions of T-cells removed. Using the disabled form of
HIV, these were modified to attack cancer cells before being put back into
their systems.
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