From Good News Instead:
A hopeful step is emerging for children facing some of the hardest-to-treat brain cancers.
In a small clinical trial at Children’s National Hospital in Washington DC, four children with brain tumors long considered incurable are still alive years after receiving an experimental immune-based treatment. Even more heartening, three of them currently show no evidence of disease. “These children are getting to grow up – it’s truly awesome,” says Gene Hwang at Children’s National Hospital. The treatment, known as tumor-associated antigen T-cell therapy, or TAA T-cell therapy, is designed to help a patient’s own immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. It was tested in 33 children and young adults with either newly diagnosed diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, known as DIPG, or other brain tumors that had not responded to standard care.