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.
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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.
Doctors decided that the only course of action left was to provide palliative care. This was when he was selected to undergo the CAR-T therapy.
In Peregrino’s case, the entire tumor disappeared as a result of the innovative therapy, doctors revealed.
“Now we have to follow up on the case. We know that after a certain time, the disease can come back. There is only talk of a total cure for cancer after five years. However, this is already very encouraging because there was no longer any type of therapy for him,” doctor and researcher Vanderson Rocha from the USP Faculty of Medicine, who participated in Peregrino’s treatment, told A24.
Of the few patients that have been treated with this therapy in Brazil, 60 percent saw their cancer disappear within just 30 days.
The first Brazilian to receive CAR-T cell therapy, Vamberto Luiz de Castro, 62, had no more detectable cancer cells in his body following fewer than 20 days of treatment. Doctors considered him “virtually” cured but he tragically died a few months after completing his treatment in an unrelated domestic accident.
Newsweek has contacted the Hospital das Clínicas for comment.