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Recurring Acute Myeloid Leukemia is one of the most difficult kinds of leukemia to cure. And there have been global efforts to find a treatment , but until now they have not been very effective. Now, a Korean bio company has developed technology that allows the mass production of what's called "N-K cells" which could lead to curing the disease. Lee Eun-jin has the details.
Leukemia is a cancer of the body's blood-forming tissues and more than half of the leukemia patients in South Korea suffer from recurring Acute Myeloid Leukemia or A-M-L. Unfortunately, the number of patients with this disease is growing every year yet the only available treatment has been anticancer drugs that are toxic to the body, or bone marrow transplants and for some, these treatments don't always work.
"There are more cases where the disease is not completely cured patients experience a relapse in under a year so there really isn't an effective treatment."
But now a South Korean bio company has successfully developed a cell therapy method for this disease using immune cells that already exist in the human body.
The function of these natural killer cells, also called N-K cells, specifically target cancer cells. It has been difficult to mass produce these N-K cells, but the bio company has found a way to multiply the production of these cells 10-fold.
What's unique about their method is that they've moved away from the existing method of separating N-K cells from the blood, which results in great losses in the process, only making use of 10 percent of the blood cells.
Instead of separating the N-K cells, the bio company separates other cells, reducing the actual N-K cells in the blood that are sacrificed.
On this foundation, the bio company has conducted four rounds of clinical tests so far, in collaboration with the Seoul Asan Medical Center.
"We've conducted the clinical test on 140 patients. The results so far are very good cases of relapse have been reduced to about half, and the rates of survival have doubled."
One of the greatest advantages of this N-K cell therapy is that it is not as toxic as the existing chemical anticancer drugs.
Researchers are now aiming to carry out phase 2 of clinical trials in the first half of this year and the medical community is expecting this new N-K cell therapy to have wider use in treatment beyond acute myeloid leukemia.
Lee Eunjin, Arirang News.