When it comes to treatment for rare diseases, or highly experimental surgery, many will first think of the USA.
Now, that superpower’s specialty is once again under threat from China, with the announcement that the Jiangsu Provincial Hospital has cured a foreigner of myeloma cancer.
Craig Chase, 56, from California, received conventional treatment for his cancer for a 3 year period, but it was unable to stop the progression of the disease. He then heard that the provincial hospital on Nanjing’s Guangzhou Lu was to undertake clinical trials of experimental treatment for the cancer.
Volunteering for the trial, Chase came to Nanjing on 19 July and underwent the pioneering CAR-T treatment, named thus as the therapy introduces a kind of white blood cell, called T-cells, into the bloodstream, that go on to attack cancer cells.
Chase was pronounced cured, and discharged from the hospital, at the end of August. It is the first time that a foreigner has received this kind of experimental therapy in a Chinese medical institution.
Speaking with the Taiwan-based Global Times, one of the doctors who treated Chase, Chen Lijuan, said that the patient was, “very brave”, to volunteer for the treatment, as CAR-T is still in its early, clinical-trial stage, and not yet mature.
Myeloma cancer, also known as multiple myeloma, is a cancer formed by malignant plasma cells. Normal plasma cells are found in the bone marrow and are an important part of the immune system.
