Genes test approved

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 34

Genes test approved

NZPA-Reuter Washington The first experiments putting genetically altered cells into humans have won initial approval for cancer research, a United States Government research chairman has said. Dr Gerard McGarrity, chairman of the Recombinant D.N.A. Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health (N.1.H.), said the committee approved the alteredcell experiments by a vote of 16 to 5. The genetically altered cells would be put into 10 volunteer cancer patients, most terminally ill, as tracers to find out why some cancer-attacking white blood cells were effective and some were not, McGarrity said. The altered bacterial 'cells give white blood cells a fingerprint ability to resist antibiotics and so will enable researchers to find out where the can-cer-attacking blood cells have gone in the body and

other details about them. “The initial objective probably will not benefit the patients themselves,” McGarrity told Reuters. “Many are terminally ill. “The immediate purpose is to find out where these white blood cells go in the body, how long they live and whether they grow in the body,” he said. But he said that although the enhanced white blood cells had dramatically helped some cancer patients and brought improvement in others, most had not been effective. The tracer tests will show, among other things, whether some of the cells do go to the tumour, but pass on through without helping to break it down. The white blood cells had been enhanced by taking those with natural tumour-attacking ability out of the body, growing them and then putting them back into the body in large doses, he said.