Dad of two given six months to live with aggressive blood cancer, survives after a Qld medical trial

Anthony Takken was given six months to live after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia but a remarkable Queensland trial has given him a chance to see his boys grow into men.

FATHER-of-two Anthony Takken was given six months to live after being diagnosed with blood cancer but was thrown a medical lifeline and with it, a chance to see his teenage boys grow into men.

After a worldwide search failed to find a matching bone marrow donor, the Sunshine Coast engineering technician was enrolled in a trial allowing him to safely receive a transplant from his brother, Grant, who was only a 50 per cent match.

Four years later, he’s cancer free, back at work three days a week, enjoying international travel and being a Dad to Travis, now 22, and Caleb, 21.

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Anthony Takken is still alive four years after receiving genetically engineered immune cells in a bone-marrow transplant.

In an Australian first, scientists at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute collected immune cells from Grant Takken, then genetically engineered them in the laboratory before transplanting them into his brother, who had an aggressive form of acute myeloid leukaemia.

QIMR Berghofer scientist Siok Tey, who is also a bone-marrow transplant physician, said the genetic modification allowed patients to receive bone marrow transplants from partially matched donors.

Under normal circumstances, such donors cannot be used because of the risk of a patient developing severe graft-versus-host disease — a potentially fatal complication which involves the immune cells attacking the recipient.

Anthony Takken with his sons Caleb and Travis during treatment.

“But by genetically engineering the donated immune cells, it allows doctors to be able to kill off the cells by giving patients a drug if they develop graft-versus-host disease,” Dr Tey said.

The Queensland-trained doctor developed the genetic modification technique while working at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Mr Takken, now 57, was one of three patients enrolled in the trial at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, using donated immune cells that were genetically engineered at the nearby QIMR Berghofer cell manufacturing facility, Q-Gen Cell Therapeutics.

Anthony Takken, on holiday with his sons before he was diagnosed, has resumed working.

Dr Tey and her team were able to show that a single genetically modified immune cell, when challenged by a cancer, could split into millions of cells within a few days.

“This immense capacity for rapid expansion was something that had not been shown before and really demonstrates the ‘power of one’: one cell, if it is the right cell, can grow rapidly and help control cancer,” she said.

Bone marrow transplantation for patients with aggressive blood cancer, such as Mr Takken, is the only chance of a cure.

“I think it’s amazing,” he said when asked about the trial and his second chance at life. “I’m in awe of what those researchers do. Life’s good.”

The results of the study are published today in the journal, Clinical Cancer Research.

Dr Tey said the two other patients in the trial died with one developing complications from the transplant and the other’s cancer relapsing after being in remission longer than was otherwise expected.

“We have more things to offer than we ever did,” Dr Tey said. “But we still, unfortunately, can’t save everyone — yet.”