Sheba Medical Center Doctors Heal Cancer Stricken Child

Innovative Cell Treatment Is a Global Medical Game-Changer

(RAMAT GAN, Israel)-Employing a new and innovative medical treatment within the context of a clinical trial, Sheba Medical Center became the first Israeli hospital to have achieved complete remission in children stricken with leukemia utilizing “CAR T-cell therapy.” CAR-T-cell therapy has achieved a 75% positive response rate in 17 patients who have been treated at Sheba Medical Center, who had previously failed to respond to conventional cancer treatments. 
This cutting-edge treatment, which uses the patients’ own T-cells taken from the immune system and genetically engineered in the laboratory to produce special receptors called Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR), are armed and attached to a specific target on cancer cells (an antigen). The cells are grown in the lab until they number in the millions and then reinfused back into the patient.
Sheba’s Pediatric Hemato-Oncology Department and the Ella Lemelbaum Institute of Immuno-Oncology, introduced the CAR T-cell therapy, becoming one of a handful of medical centers in the world to produce these kinds of cells to utilize this innovative treatment successfully, within the context of clinical (i.e. experimental) trials.
“We have the advantage of making our own cells, as well as conducting the research and clinical trials within our labs, independent of any pharmaceutical company in Israel or the USA,” revealed Dr. Michal Besser, who heads the clinical laboratory at the Ella Lemelbaum Institute of Immuno-Oncology at Sheba Medical Center. “We have actually been conducting clinical trials and researching T-cell therapy for several decades. With the remission of 75% of highly advanced lymphoma and leukemia patients, who failed all standard treatments, we believe that this type of therapy will be the platform to combat other forms of cancer, as well as other diseases in the near future.”

 
 Dr. Michal Besser