Mission Monday: Your Donations at Work

For some patients with blood cancers, a bone-marrow transplant is their best treatment option. But it is difficult and risky.

A breakthrough trial in Philadelphia by Dr. Carl June is using patients' own immune systems as a safer, better option. In this LLS-funded research, doctors collect a patient's immune T cells, engineer them in the lab as "killer cells" and return them to the patient. The modified cells are trained to attack the cancer and multiply to expand the anti-cancer army.

Last week, success of this trial was heralded in the media. In this "immunotherapy" clinical trial, three adults with chronic leukemia achieved complete remissions with no signs of disease. Four other adults showed partial remissions. And a six-year-old patient diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia is now seven months in complete remission.

For blood cancer patients everywhere - LLS's drive to develop safer and more effective treatments like this immunotherapy brings hope. And your dollars are making that possible today, not someday.