Immunotherapy, a breakthrough for ALL pediatric cancer patients to be imminently applied at 57357
On the occasion of Hospital 57357’s celebration of 10 years of operation, the first ever immunotherapy symposium in Egypt and the surrounding region was held yesterday (November 9, 2017,) at the Hospital premises. North American experts and eminent physicians animated the scientific meeting with the latest on the subject. They came from Texas Children’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, The Children’s National Medical Center, DC, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, Seattle, MD Parker Institute for cancer Immunotherapy, and University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Nabil Ahmed, MD, MPH, a physician scientist at Texas Children’s Hospital, key coordinator of the event and advisor to 57357’s CEO on Research, revealed that the symposium had indeed achieved the goals it set out to accomplish including:
(1) Educating the public and the health-care-professionals in Egypt and the surrounding region about immunotherapy which is a major breakthrough in cancer treatment,
(2) Bringing cutting-edge research to 57357 and show its evolving role in such research discipline,
(3) Educating leaders in the field about 57357 – the speakers are coming from World-renowned institutions and are the leaders in this field.
With respect to immunology research and 57357’s role in it, Dr. Nabil Ahmed confirmed that the hospital was “working on both ends; the US and 57357 to make breakthroughs in science and that through such synergies complex cutting-edge science can be developed.” It is noteworthy that research is jointly being carried out in this field through Dr. Nabil Ahmed’s Texas-based laboratory at The Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and his research team which includes members of Hospital 57357. Conversely, high-caliber studies are conducted on Hospital 57357 premises in a manner that complements the research project meaningfully.
Cellular therapies are designed to harness the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. This kind of therapy involves collecting a specific group of immune cells from the blood, modifying them to produce a more forceful attack on a patient’s cancer cells, and then re- injecting or re -transferring them into the patient. Cellular therapies or immunotherapy are the latest breakthrough in cancer therapy over the last several years. There are several types of cell therapies including the CAR T-cell therapy, one form of which has been recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration to be used in treating children afflicted with resistant acute lymphoblastic leukemia and a second, for adults with advanced lymphomas.
Dr. Nabil Ahmed is hopeful about the imminent application of immunotherapy by 57357 and its potential manufacturing of CAR T cells, explaining that 57357 “plans to bring immunotherapy with genetically engineered CAR T cells to the diseases that we know they can cure; acute lymphoblastic leukemia and lymphoma. Subsequently, we will target diseases in which it is less established.”
Because of the remarkable responses cellular therapies have produced with certain types of Leukemia in some patients—both children and adults for whom all other treatments had stopped working, researchers have embarked on exploring whether they could ever be effective in solid tumors.