Iran Inaugurates Project for Gene Therapy of Children with Leukemia
“Among the three main branches of stem cell science and regenerative medicine are cell therapy, gene therapy and tissue engineering. The main market belongs to gene therapy. For this reason, the gene therapy project was launched in collaboration with a knowledge-based company at the Children's Medical Center,” said Amir Ali Hamidiyeh, the head of the gene, cell, and tissue research institute of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
He referred to the development of gene therapy in the country, and said, “In addition to this knowledge-based company, about 13 other technological or knowledge-based companies are also active in this field.”
Hamidiyeh added that the Iranian researchers spent some seven years for the development of new gene therapy method for treating blood cancer.
Iranian specialists and physicians for the first time in the country succeeded in treating a child with leukemia using gene therapy.
A team of Iranian doctors presented a unique method called ‘CAR T-cell therapy’ for the treatment of children with cancer using gene therapy.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a way to get immune cells called T cells (a type of white blood cell) to fight cancer by changing them in the lab so they can find and destroy cancer cells. CAR T-cell therapy is also sometimes talked about as a type of cell-based gene therapy because it involves altering the genes inside T cells to help them attack cancer.
CAR T-cell is the newest method for cancer treatment in the world, which has reached the final stage with the efforts of an Iranian knowledge-based company, Hamidiyeh said.
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