Diseases & conditions

Base Editing Clears Girl's Incurable Cancer

DEC 11 2022·Updated FEB 6 2024

Story

Image credit: Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children

The Facts

Alyssa, a 13-year-old girl from Leicester, England, who was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia last year, has been cleared of her incurable cancer after undergoing a base editing cell therapy at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
BBC News
According to her doctors, the teenager had an aggressive form of cancer where her T-cells — which are supposed to protect a person by seeking out and destroying defective cells — had become dangerous to the healthy parts of her body.
Daily Mail
After extensive chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant (BMT) failed to rid the cancerous cells from her body, Alyssa entered a clinical trial and became the first patient to receive an experimental treatment involving base editing.
STV News
As part of the breakthrough trial, she received a healthy donor's edited T-cells (a type of white blood cell), which located and destroyed Alyssa's cancerous T-cells without attacking each other.
BBC News
Twenty-eight days later, Alyssa was in remission. Afterwards, doctors gave her a second bone marrow transplant to restore her immune system. Six months post-BMT, her cancer is reportedly untraceable — though she is still being monitored in case it comes back.
New Scientist
Robert Chiesa, one of the doctors treating Alyssa, said that by altering the fundamental building blocks of the genetic coding of immune cells, base editing "paves the way for other new treatments and ultimately better futures for sick children."
The Telegraph

Sources Split

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The Spin

Narrative A

The outcome of this revolutionary treatment is remarkable, and makes base editing a strong contender in the development of innovative cell and gene therapies. With trials for curing single-cell diseases already underway, the next step is for the biomedical community to develop a versatile, cost-effective program to make base editing cures a reality for millions of patients worldwide.

nytimes

Narrative B

Though base editing might have saved Alyssa's life, it's too early to guess her prognosis. Furthermore, considering that the treatment can permanently change a patient's genetic code, every effort must be made to identify and address ethical issues that may arise with its use, such as the privacy and confidentiality of genomic data.