In a trial of 29 people with a deadly form of leukemia—acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)—and no other treatment options, 27 went into remission after scientists plucked some of their immune cells, engineering them to fight cancer, then replaced them
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The method was also successful at treating handfuls of patients with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Treatment saved ~90% of terminal cancer patients, but it has scary side effects | Ars Technica
Scientists cautiously optimistic about reprogramming immune cells to wipe out cancer.
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If I am reading the article correctly, the side effect is what you'd expect.
Cancer cells are the patient's own cells with faulty programming. This means it is very tricky to teach the immune system to just attack the cancer cells, and not attack all the patient's cells.
I was going to say, "how scary could they be when you're terminal and out of options?", but the article pretty much says that too.
When your going to die anyways, I hope they aren't cruel enough to use the two that died to give people ZERO chance.
Blinatumomab is a medication that leverages your T Cells against cancer cells that express the CD19 protein. Very similar affect, different implementation. Issue that this article doesn't mention is that not all of your leukemia cells will have CD19. These methods will have no effect on those cells. When the relapse happens, it is called CD19 negative leukemia. These methods were primarily developed for pre b cell leukemia, not acute lymphoblastic leukemia. B cells have CD19 protein. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia can have CD10 or CD10 and CD19. The science behind leveraging your own body is very exciting though.