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News Nature Medicine 11, 241 (2005)
News In Brief
Emily Singer
Third cancer halts gene therapy trial
Doctors resuspended a French gene therapy trial designed to treat children with an inherited immune disorder in January, after a nine-month-old infant showed signs of cancer.
Children with severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) possess faulty copies of a gene needed to fight infections and must live in a sterile environment. In the gene therapy treatment, a virus inserts a corrective copy of this faulty gene into cells.
The trial was initially halted in 2002, when two children undergoing treatment developed leukemia; one of these children has since died. Scientists think that the virus inserted its genetic material next to a cancer-causing gene in these patients. The French medical regulatory authority AFSSAPS gave permission to restart the study in May 2004 after deciding that the potential benefits outweighed the risks.
The new case is a particular blow for researchers, who had hoped that babies treated after they were six months old would be less vulnerable to cancer. Researchers are now investigating the cause of the latest cancer, in the child who was treated at nine months of age.
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-Michael
