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Biological Life Insurance

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 September 2005, 06:00 CDT

Imagine being able to store your own white blood cells to use as a form of treatment if you ever fell ill in the future. One Welsh company has become the first in the world to do exactly that, as Health Editor Madeleine Brindley reports

BUSINESS manager Simon Bennett is on a tight schedule, driving across the country to various meetings.

At the moment though, he's got his sleeves rolled up and is watching as a sample of his blood is being taken from his arm.

But the 42-year-old is not just donating his blood, he's investing in a form of biological life insurance, which he hopes one day - should the worst happen - will save his life.

Once Mr Bennett's blood is collected it will be carefully separated and the white blood cells, which form the basis of his immune system, will be put into deep-frozen storage, only to be defrosted should he fall ill and need a potentially life-saving re- infusion of these disease-free white blood cells at some point in his future life.

The Bath-based business man said, 'My partner, a Bupa senior manager, has already done this and she told me about the benefits, that in years to come, if there was any issue with my health, then I would be able to come back and get these white blood cells to help restore my immune system.

'That's the main reason why I've decided to do it - I suppose its like a health insurance policy.'

The Lifeforce Immune System Bank, is run from a suite of hi-tech WDA offices just off the M4 outside Newport. Inside the otherwise inconspicuous office space, in a clean laboratory, is one of the great steel cauldrons which holds these precious white blood cell samples, suspended in time in liquid nitrogen vapour at minus-194 Centigrade.

The principle behind the company's business is based on the emerging field of adoptive immunotherapy, or biological therapy, which has been successfully used around the world to treat a wide variety of cancers and chronic viral infections.

The therapy could also bring new hope to people who are HIV positive or have full-blown Aids.

The white blood cells normally used in adoptive immunotherapy have traditionally been collected from patients after they have fallen ill and are invariably affected by the disease or illness which has struck down the whole body.

By preserving a sample of a person's pristine, un-diseased, white blood cells taken when they are fit and well, Lifeforce is storing a slice of that person's health, which theoretically, will help to restore a person's immune system when given as a treatment during their illness.

Del DelaRonde, one of Lifeforce's founders and its chief executive officer, said, 'The two major illnesses which we see Lifeforce being able to help is cancer and HIV and Aids.

'As we age our immune system becomes more obsolete - it gets weaker as we get older. As a result, particularly with cancer, the immune system is less able to fight disease.

'There are three ways at the moment to deal with something like cancer - surgery to remove the tumour, followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which can wipe out whatever is left of the immune system and normally requires another course of treatment to rebuild it.

'Lifeforce is the fourth method of treatment.

'Our idea is that if people have laid down a sample of their immune system - their white blood cells - when they are well and have a full complement of these cells, they can use this sample to fight disease in the future.

'In the case of cancer, after the tumour has been removed, they have these stored immune cells put back into them to re-infuse their immune system and body, giving them a massively increased chance of fighting off the cancer.

'We freeze three samples but these cells can be expanded almost infinitely in the laboratory before they are given back to the patient - it's almost like the Biblical feeding of the 5,000.'

Although adoptive immunotherapy is an emerging form of treatment, there have been a number of studies into its effectiveness.

A Japanese study compared the effect of adoptive immunotherapy on 150 liver cancer patients.

The researchers from the Tokyo University Medical School found in 2000 that 40% of those patients who had their own cells returned to them were still alive and cancer-free after six-and-a-half years, compared to less than 20% who received the best alternative therapy.

And in an American study into its effect on 33 patients with prostate cancer which had not responded to any other form of therapy, about a third who had adoptive immunotherapy responded to treatment within 12 months.

While little research has been carried out in the role adoptive immunotherapy can play in the fight against HIV and Aids, there has been a pre-clinical study into what happens when monkeys with chronic SIV infection - the equivalent of HIV - are given re- infusions of their own non-diseased white blood cells.

The researchers from the US Naval Medical Research Institute in Atlanta found that it was sufficient to induce long-term non- progressor status, even when anti-viral drugs - the current accepted form of treatment to stabilise HIV positive people - were not used.

An Australian study which saw HIV-positive humans re-infused with either their own or their uninfected identical twin's white blood cells also found that there was a prolonged reversal of their progression to Aids and an enhanced anti-HIV effect. While most of Lifeforce's clients to date have been storing samples of their immune systems as insurance against any major ill-health in the future, many have been attracted by the threat of avian flu.

British vets have warned that this H5N1 strain of bird flu will arrive in the UK with migrating birds - it has already reached Russia from the Far East.

Experts are concerned that this form of the virus, which infects birds and poultry, could be the source of the next pandemic if it mutates to infect humans.

Such a threat has seen people storing their white blood cells in a bid to improve their chances of fighting off a killer flu strain, should it strike the UK.

Source: Western Mail

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