WASHINGTON: Emily Whitehead is kind of a big deal. At age seven, she is the only child to have beaten back leukemia with the help of a new treatment that turned her own immune cells into targeted cancer killers.
She has been in remission for 11 months and is the first pediatric patient in a growing US trial that is showing signs of success after decades of research and now includes three other children and dozens of adults.
Her mother said Emily sometimes grapples with her newfound celebrity, which ballooned after the trial's preliminary results were first announced late last year.
"When we go to places where there are a lot of people, sometimes they want pictures with her, or sometimes just to touch her, so I think it gets a little overwhelming," Kari Whitehead told AFP.
For the most part though, Emily is happy to play with her dog, read, write and explore the outdoors, thanks to an experimental treatment that saved her life after two relapses left doctors admitting they had no other options.
Now, the US researchers behind the method are expanding their quest for a next-generation cancer treatment that may require one dose in a lifetime, and may one day end the use of chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants.
While the word "cure" is something most experts would not whisper until a patient has lived at least five years illness-free, the field of research into targeted immune therapies is generating buzz.
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