How HIV Virus cured Cancer

In a most amazing development, US doctors in Philadelphia said they have saved a seven-year-old girl who was close to dying from leukemia with a pioneering use of a least expected agent – a modified form of the HIV virus! Leukemia is a cancer of the blood cells and it normally starts in the bone marrow.

After fighting her disease with chemotherapy for almost two years and suffering two relapses, Emily Whitehead “faced grim prospects,” doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia had said. So in February this year they agreed to take her on in an experimental program that fought fire with fire. Helped by a genetically altered HIV virus — stripped of its devastating properties that cause AIDS — doctors turned the girl’s own immune cells into a superior force able to rout the “aggressive” leukemia.

Emily’s treatment was one of the very first of its kind and cannot yet be considered “a magic bullet,” the hospital said. But in her case, it apparently worked completely. Initially, millions of the girl’s natural immune system cells were removed. Then the modified HIV virus was used to carry in a new gene that would boost the immune cells and help them spot, then attack cancer cells that had previously been able to sneak in “under the radar,” the hospital said on its website. Finally the rebooted immune cells were sent back in to do their work.

According to the hospital, “The researchers have created a guided missile that locks in on and kills B cells, thereby attacking B-cell leukemia.” Meanwhile, Pediatric oncologist Stephan Grupp, who cared for the girl, explained that there was never any danger of AIDS during the process: “The way we get the new gene into the T cells (immune cells) is by using a virus. This virus was developed from the HIV virus, however all of the parts of the HIV virus that can cause disease are removed… It is impossible to catch HIV or any other infection. What’s left is the property of the HIV virus that allows it to put new genes into cells,” he had said in an email.