Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Medicine has announced positive results in using "killer cells", rare types of white blood cells, to fight acute leukaemia.
The method is part of immunotherapy, a cancer treatment that uses a patient's own immune system to fight tumours instead of more commonly known techniques to eliminate malignant cells with radiation or drugs.
Experts at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital on Tuesday hailed their work as an innovative step towards treating leukaemia, a cancer of the blood, in the country after successfully multiplying the number of killer cells to build an 'army' of cells large enough to tackle the disease in patients.
Their team last year experimented with the method on five patients suffering acute myeloid leukaemia, a condition in which the bone marrow produces abnormal blood cells.
"We've achieved both the quantity and quality of killer cells we needed," after being given samples of killer cells from donors, said Koramit Supphaphiwat, who leads the immunotherapy research team.
These killer cells can be used safely in patients as they are not contaminated with other cells and not tainted by endotoxin, or bacteria-derived toxin, he said.
His team is observing how well the patients recover from the disease through this method.
Killer cells, which are naturally found in the immune system, move throughout the body looking out for irregular cells. The killer cells then destroy the irregular cells before they develop into cancer.
"But their numbers in the blood are very small. If we want to use them [sustainably] for treatment, we have to increase them," Dr Koramit said.
Usually, killer cells account for between 5% and 10% of white blood cells in the body.
Studies show the killer cells are good at treating acute myeloid leukaemia but less effective in dealing with solid cancerous tumours.
"We want to tell people this good news, this first step, in cancer treatment," Sutthiphong Watcharasinthu, hospital director and dean of the Faculty of Medicine, said.
This research paves the way for new forms of treatment in Thailand where cancer has been the No.1 cause of death since 1999, he said.