Emma Dimery was 23 years old when she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Over the next decade, she tried everything in vain: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and conventional immunotherapy. That changed in March 2023, when she received an infusion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) edited with CRISPR at a key gene checkpoint, CISH. Since then, she has been in complete remission, with no detectable traces of the tumor.

Her case was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting held recently in Chicago. At the same time, Emil Lou and colleagues published the results of the clinical trial in Lancet Oncology, and many media outlets have taken an interest in the story.

For those who read Italian, I wrote about this in Osservatorio Terapie Avanzate. To learn more about the trial, here is the press release from the sponsor, Intima Bioscience, and here is a video on CRISPR Checkpoint Cell Therapy.