A man has seen his cancer disappear after just one month of cutting-edge treatment.
Brazilian Paulo Peregrino, 61, was told that there was no chance of his cancer improving prior to undergoing the innovative treatment in April. But on Sunday, Peregrino was discharged from the Hospital das Clínicas of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, Radioagência Nacional reported.
The 61-year-old had received CAR-T cell therapy—one of the most advanced cancer treatments developed to date. It involves removing and isolating immune cells known as T lymphocytes, or T cells, from the body. These cells are responsible for fighting pathogens and killing infected cells.
Once they have been removed, the cells are "reprogrammed" to become more effective at targeting and destroying cancer cells. They are then infused back into the body of the patient. The entire process can take around 60 days.
CAR-T cell therapy emerged in the United States and began to be used experimentally to treat terminal cancer patients in the early 2010s. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2017.
While the therapy has been shown to be effective, it is expensive—costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient—and can only currently be used to treat certain types of cancer, such as lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma.
It is also only available at present in certain countries, including the U.S., China, the U.K. and Australia.
Peregrino is one of just a handful of Brazilians undergoing the innovative treatment, with the availability of CAR-T cell therapy being very limited in his home country.
Peregrino was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010 and then with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma about ten years later, the A24 news agency reported.
He had exhausted the options available to him for the treatment of his lymphoma, undergoing 45 chemotherapy sessions in a period of five years, as well as a bone marrow transplant.
"Nothing helped," Peregrino told A24.