When it comes to medical treatments, there have been plenty of advancements made, although due to government regulation, they aren’t always approved for use. However it seems that the FDA has recently greenlit a new gene therapy procedure that is meant to combat a particular type of leukemia.This procedure is known as Kymriah and will use the patient’s own cells to combat acute lymphoblastic leukemia. This is apparently a common childhood cancer within the US, and it is said that there are about 3,000 such cases that are diagnosed on an annual basis. With the Kymriah treatment, the patient’s autoimmune T-cells are extracted and sent to a facility where they are then modified to include a new gene that will order the T-cells to attack the leukemia cells.
According to Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), “Kymriah is a first-of-its-kind treatment approach that fills an important unmet need for children and young adults with this serious disease. Not only does Kymriah provide these patients with a new treatment option where very limited options existed, but a treatment option that has shown promising remission and survival rates in clinical trials.”
However there are certain limitations to this treatment, and that is it will only be permitted for use in children and young adults up to age 25.
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