Illustration of researchers.

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ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT / AFP

  • A new treatment against liver cancer has just been tested on a patient at the Rennes University Hospital.

  • The experiment was carried out using a cellular immunotherapy approach.

  • Similar tests are also being carried out in Paris and Marseille.

It is one of the most difficult cancers to manage.

However, its incidence continues to increase with more than 10,000 new cases per year in France.

In Rennes, a new treatment against liver cancer has just been tested on a patient as part of an international study.

The experiment was carried out by teams from the CHU and the Eugène Marquis center using a cellular immunotherapy approach, which consists of "reprogramming" the patient's white blood cells so that they attack the cancer.

This technique has already been used for several years to treat “liquid” cancers (leukemia, lymphomas) for which conventional treatments have not been proven, but it is not yet used for “solid” cancers.

The selected patient, aged 59, has advanced “hepatocarcinoma”, the most common form of liver cancer and the one that causes the most deaths.

Conventional treatments have not at this stage made it possible to regress the disease in this patient.

Results known within two to three years

“So far, the treatment has gone well, but it is too early to talk about effectiveness.

The results will only be known once the study has been completed and analyzed, within 2 to 3 years, ”explains Professor Roch Houot of the Rennes University Hospital.

The technique consists schematically in "taking the patient's white blood cells, which are normally made to recognize microbes, and reprogramming them in the laboratory to recognize cancer cells, before reinjecting them into the blood", explains Roch Houot.

Lymphocytes are "equipped on their surface with a small receptor that makes them capable of recognizing cancer cells and destroying them," he adds.

Besides Rennes, two other French hospitals, in Marseille and Paris, are participating in this trial.

Other therapeutic trials should be launched in the coming months on other cancers.

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