Hopeful UK leukaemia patient is the world's first to try 'lifesaving' treatment
Last updated 8/26/2008 9:29:02 AM
Hopeful UK leukaemia patient is the worlds first to try lifesaving treatment
A UK patient has become the first in the world to undergo a treatment for leukaemia which she and her doctors hope will save her life.
Joanne Scott, 53, who lives in Kentish Town, London, has been treated with "natural killer cells" from her daughter that were activated in the laboratory before being transfused into Joanne.
Doctors at Royal Free Hospital believe these activated cells will survive in Joanne's system and kill the cancer.
Joanne, a fashion designer, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) three years ago. She was treated with four courses of chemotherapy but kept suffering relapses, the last a year ago.
The treatment of choice in this situation is a transplant from a matched, unrelated donor, but there was none suitable. An autologous transplant – using cells from the patient, which has a 50% success rate - was tried but Joanne relapsed again.