"Huge" cancer breakthrough

There are very few ways to fight against Leukemia, none of which is hurt and cause serious illness.  A new method that was tested over a year ago for three patients.  It involves inserting an engineered virus into blood where the virus attaches itself to T cells (a form of white blood cells) and then the virus tells the T cells to multiply and then attack cancer cells.  This proved to be a high aggressive way to fight the cancer cells.

LA Times describes the procedure:

To build the cancer-attacking cells, the researchers modified a virus to carry instructions for making a molecule that binds with leukemia cells and directs T cells to kill them. Then they drew blood from three patients who suffered from chronic lymphocytic leukemia and infected their T cells with the virus. When they infused the blood back into the patients, the engineered T cells successfully eradicated cancer cells, multiplied to more than 1,000 times in number and survived for months. They even produced dormant "memory" T cells that might spring back to life if the cancer was to return. On average, the team calculated, each engineered T cell eradicated at least 1,000 cancer cells.

A year later, two out the three patients are cancer free!  This could be the next big cancer breakthrough.