Member Doug Picha, president of Seattle Children's Hospital and Research Foundation, introduced Dr. Mike Jensen of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research.   

 

With the hopeful proclamation that "amazing cures are on their way,"  Dr. Mike Jensen discussed the premise and the promise of his medical research which is changing the landscape of childhood cancer treatment. Noting that the traditional cancer therapies of radiation and chemotherapy typically cause tremendous harm to children's bodies, Dr. Jensen has focused his 30 years of research on harnessing the body's own curative power via gene and immunotherapies. Dr. Jensen works with T-cells which he hailed as the "warrior cells" of our immune systems. He praised our immune systems for walking a tightrope every day, saying they must attack invaders without creating auto-immune reactions.  

 

Eight years ago, Seattle Children's recruited him to be the founding member of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research and he began his work here. Analogizing the T-cell to a cell phone, he explained that his work was to invent a new "app" for that cell phone.  If a T-cell is a cell phone, recombinant DNA is the "app" and Dr. Jensen's "app" directs the T-cell to attack and kill cancer cells while remaining an active and healthy T-cell.  

 

A short video clip from his laboratory microscopically showed us T-cells "cleaning up" a toxin in the blood- this has already been well-established medicine.  The premise of Dr. Jensen's research was that a patient's T-cells could be reprogrammed to kill that patient's particular cancer cells  Minutes later a remarkable second microscopic video showed us an experiment in which reprogrammed T-cells attacked blastoma cells, killing them all.  Dr. Jensen reported the reprogrammed T-cells killed all of the blastoma cells in that test tube of blood within 45 minutes.  With that success, Dr. Jensen and the Ben Towne Center began the FDA process for approval to treat patients with this therapy. 

 

Greta, a toddler who was diagnosed with pediatric leukemia at age one, was among the first recipients.  She'd been treated aggressively at Children's but when she relapsed, her parents prepared to take her home for hospice care.  FDA approval came through and Dr. Jensen administered one dose - the size of a baby aspirin - of her reprogrammed T-cells.  The treatment took only three minutes to administer but the medical researchers waited a couple weeks before testing her blood.   When they did, not a single leukemic cell was present.  We saw a picture of healthy Greta dressed for her first day of kindergarten.

 

Dr. Jensen and the Ben Towne Center have treated about 200 pediatric patients to date. Their patients are the sickest of the sick and typically have received over $2 million in health care before receiving this treatment.  He said they have an amazing 95% remission rate for children with lymphoblastic leukemia and have moved into trials treating brain tumors and solid tumor cancers.    

 

Dr. Jensen's vision is to lead the world in the use of immunotherapy of childhood cancers, with the hope that this treatment will replace chemotherapy and radiation.  To that end, the Building Cure, a new "T-cell Factory" ten times the size of the Ben Towne laboratory, is under construction here in Seattle.  Through Dr. Jensen's Cure Works, he hopes to use the new T-cell factory to make individualized reprogrammed T-cells here in Seattle and ship the T-cells to patients and their health care providers worldwide. 

   

President Cindy brought the meeting to order and, alluding to the speaker, suggested we share our wish for a child in our lives. Lou Lundquist sonorously introduced God Bless America and we joined him to sing the chorus as Marli Iverson accompanied on the piano.

 

Ken Colling gave the invocation and reminded us of Eleanor Roosevelt's wartime prayer recalling those who died for us and expressing hope that we are worth dying for.

 

Carla Fowler and Jan Levy were mic handlers for introductions and Q and A for the speaker. George Twiss introduced new member Andrew Lyon and Jan Levy introduced new member Michelle Stone.  

   

Jon Bridge assisted President Cindy in appreciating new member sponsors.  Jon not only donated a gift, he drew the winner (Cathy Gibson).  Carl Behnke, aided by straight man Mike Troyer, teased Jon and urged all members to fulfill their obligation to donate to SRSF and TRF.   

   

After a lively question and answer session with Dr. Jensen and a preview of next week's speaker, the meeting was adjourned.