A major breakthrough in CLL therapy. There's a new serial killer in town.

They did it, they got the benefits of an allogenic transplant, namely a new population of T cells that alert the immune system in an ongoing way to search and destroy the cancerous B cells. A transplant sans transplant. The benefits without many of the most horrific risks.

Here's a link to a VIDEO that tells the story.

These T cells have been changed with the insertion of new genetic information by infection outside the body with an HIV type retrovirus that, when they are put back into the same patient, gives them the ability to recognize and attach to the CLL cells, to arouse a very robust inflammatory response (read that they initiate a killing frenzy of both cancerous and good B cells and its precursors), and most importantly to proliferate and stay around for at least a year.

Am I encouraged? You bet.

This has the potential to change everything. This has the real potential to cure CLL.

But at this point it all still potential and conjecture, and all therapies look great when they are brand new. There are may unknowns and concerns. Still, it is an exciting time to be a CLL patient.

More soon on what I think this means for anyone with CLL in general and for me in particular.

In the meantime, I am rooting for these new cops, this new "007" secret agents with their license to kill.

And all this was done with no pharma money!

Anyway you look at it, this is very good news.