HEALTH : Gene Inserted to Fight Cancer

Two patients suffering from a deadly type of skin cancer today underwent the first attempt to use gene therapy to fight cancer, federal researchers said.

In what could usher in a new era in cancer treatment, a 29-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man stricken with advanced melanoma underwent the therapy at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

A team of surgeons led by Dr. Steven Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute, inserted a gene that carries codes for the production of a tumor-shrinking substance into special tumor-fighting immune cells removed from the cancer patients, multiplied in the test tube and then returned to the patients’ bodies.

It is hoped the genetically altered cells will migrate to the patients’ tumors and produce the tumor-shrinking factor in that area only.