Fighting an aggressive and often deadly form of leukemia with the HIV virus? It’s an experimental treatment that’s giving a Utah family hope for the future. In early 2012, Marshall Jensen was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
For the last three years, Jensen and his family have traveled around the country for surgeries, treatments and procedures to fight his leukemia. But the cancer returned after several treatments, leaving little hope.
Then Jensen learned about Dr. Carl June and his team of researchers at Penn Medicine. They’ve spent two decades developing a breakthrough experimental treatment that kills cancer in otherwise incurable leukemia patients.
Perhaps even more amazing than the turnaround is what June’s therapy uses to fight the cancer: HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “It’s a disabled virus,” June explained. “But it retains the one essential feature of HIV, which is the ability to insert new genes into cells.”
In June’s therapy, billions of T-cells are taken from the cancer patient’s body. The T-cells are then taken into the lab where the DNA in the cells is altered with a harmless form of the HIV virus. The altered cells — now programmed to recognize, target and kill the cancer — are then placed back into the patient’s body.
June said the cells, which he refers to as “serial killers,” stay dormant in the body unless the cancer returns.