Immune therapy shows promise for asthma, heart disease—and even ageing
Making treatment quick and affordable will be the challenge
IN 2010 AN American girl called Emily Whitehead developed a form of leukaemia that is usually terminal. She was five years old. Two years later, she became the first paediatric patient to be offered a form of treatment called CAR-T, in which the body’s immune system is reprogrammed to attack cancerous cells. The treatment worked. A documentary film about her journey, released in 2022, was called “Of Medicine and Miracles”.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “When T-cells attack”
From the September 28th 2024 edition
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