Base Editing: Revolutionary Therapy Clears Girl's Incurable Cancer

Facts

Alyssa, a 13-year-old girl from Leicester, England, who was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia last year, has been cleared of her incurable cancer after undergoing a base editing cell therapy at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
According to her doctors, the teenager had an aggressive form of cancer where her T-cells — which are supposed to protect a person by seeking out and destroying defective cells — had become dangerous to the healthy parts of her body.
After extensive chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant (BMT) failed to rid the cancerous cells from her body, Alyssa entered a clinical trial and became the first patient to receive an experimental treatment involving base editing.
As part of the breakthrough trial, Alyssa received a healthy donor's edited T-cells (a type of white blood cell), which located and destroyed Alyssa's cancerous T-cells without attacking each other.
Twenty-eight days later, Alyssa was in remission. Afterwards, doctors gave her a second bone marrow transplant to restore her immune system. Six months post-BMT, her cancer is reportedly untraceable — though Alyssa is still being monitored in case it comes back.
Robert Chiesa, one of the doctors treating Alyssa, said that by altering the fundamental building blocks of the genetic coding of immune cells, base editing: "paves the way for other new treatments and ultimately better futures for sick children."

Narrative A, as provided by The New York Times. The outcome of this revolutionary treatment is remarkable and makes base editing a strong contender in the development of innovative cell and gene therapies. Doctors can now successfully rewrite a person's DNA and cure terminal illnesses, and there are already trials of base editing underway in single-cell diseases. The next step is for the biomedical community to develop a versatile, cost-effective program to make base editing cures a reality for millions of patients worldwide.
Narrative B, as provided by WHO. Though base editing might have saved Alyssa's life, it's too early to guess her prognosis. These are early steps — patients as young as 13 are being treated with a technology just six years after it was invented and, given its such a new and potentially revolutionary treatment, there's a lot of potential for misuse of the development. Considering that the treatment can permanently change a patient's genetic code, every effort must be made to identify and address ethical issues that may arise with its use, such as the privacy and confidentiality of genomic data.