Mini cell treatment hope for cancer sufferers

The ground-breaking treatment uses stem cells injected into patients from donor blood.

Experts are hailing the procedure as a safer and faster alternative to conventional bone marrow operations.

Trials of the pioneering technique have been carried out by doctors at Barts and London who say it is a lifesaver for leukaemia patients who are too weak for intensive chemotherapy.

Professor John Gribben, a cancer expert at the hospital, told the Standard: "This treatment is life-saving for patients who are too weak to undergo further chemotherapy and also means people don' t have to spend months in hospital."

The treatment reduces the amount of chemotherapy needed by patients and also removes the need for donors to undergo a gruelling operation to extract bone marrow.

Instead, they are given a chemical which encourages stem cells to migrate from the bone marrow and into the blood stream. The donor is hooked up to a machine that extracts these cells. These are collected by doctors and injected straight into the patient.

The extracted cells have their own "tracking system" which enables them to find their way to the diseased bone marrow which they then repair.

Stem cell therapy is already regarded by scientists as having huge potential for treating a range of diseases and disabilities including Alzheimer's and heart problems.

Stem cells have huge potential as a human "repair kit" because of their ability to generate healthy new tissue anywhere in the body.

This is of particular importance with cancer where rogue cells damage organs.

Mini cell stem transplants have already been used in the US but this is the first time the technique has been tested on patients here. The standard way of treating leukaemia patients is to give them high doses of radiation therapy which is often successful.

But patients with aggressive forms of the disease often have to undergo several rounds of chemotherapy which can leave them too weak to undergo a bone marrow transplant.

With this method, patients only have to have a low dose of chemotherapy just before the transplant. This is used to suppress the immune system and allow the transplanted cells to take root.

Professor Gribben, professor of experimental cancer medicine at Barts and the London, said mini transplants were vital for these patients whose immune systems have virtually shut down. He said: "In the past people used to have to be in hospital for months.

"This way we've condensed the whole treatment down. The standard way of doing a transplant is to use high doses of chemicals but the mini transplant only uses low doses. People think of a transplant as a last resort but if you wait it's usually too late."

Cancer charities welcomed the breakthrough. Cancer Research UK said it was a "significant" development.

Josephine Querido, from Cancer Research UK, said: "This new approach to stem cell transplants in leukaemia patients has the potential to save many lives in the future. The early results of Professor Gribben's pilot study are very exciting - this treatment now needs to be tested in a large scale clinical trial."