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Altered Immune Cells Help Girl Beat Leukemia
An anonymous reader writes "For decades, one of cancer's most powerful weapons has been to corrupt the human immune system. Finally, researchers in Philadelphia have developed a way to turn that weapon against certain cancers, and potentially open the door to a whole new generation of therapies for all manner of cancers. From the article: 'It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options. Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.'"
Your link isn't the same research as what the article is talking about though.
The article is about removing a patient's stem cells, using neutered HIV to deliver a payload to them that changes the immune system at a genetic level and then reintroducing the stem cells into the patient. The patient's immune system would then be equipped to kill the cancer. Your link discusses infecting patients with a virus that targets cancer cells preferentially, killing a cancer while at the same time giving the patient only mild symptoms.
On the one had, the article is talking about real, honest to goodness genetic engineering of a living human being which is, quite frankly, science fiction levels of amazing. But it almost universally causes a cytokinetic swarm in the patient as the immune system suddenly knows how to fight massive amounts of what it suddenly sees as infected tissue (actually tumors). The HIV is disabled the same way other viruses are disabled to create vaccines, and even if the patient got HIV somehow that would in fact still be preferable than dying immediately from cancer.
On the other, your article would indicate a cure that would be essentially zero cost to produce. The side affects are minimal but, and this is the proverbial "but" that is probably killing all research on the topic, you also have a virus that is capable of killing the vast majority of one tissue type (tumor) inside the human body. And that is quite frankly terrifying. Until you can quantify how likely or unlikely the virus is to target a different tissue type and how likely is it that the virus is communicable (or could mutate to become so) you won't be trying it out on anyone.