<i>Leukaemia cured using HIV virus</i>

Emily, her mother

US doctors say they have saved a seven-year-old girl who was close to dying from leukaemia by achievement, a major international study showed on Tuesday.
After fighting her disease with chemotherapy for almost two years and suffering two relapses, Emily Whitehead "faced grim prospects", doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said.

In February this year, they agreed to take her on in an experimental programme that fought fire with fire.

Helped by a genetically altered HIV virus -- stripped of its devastating properties that cause AIDS -- doctors turned the girl's own immune cells into a superior force able to rout the "aggressive" leukaemia.

Emily was the first child and is one of only a handful of people in total to be given what's officially known as CTL019 therapy.

Pediatric oncologist Stephan Grupp, who cared for the girl, explained Tuesday that there was never any danger of AIDS during the process.

He said on the hospital website that cell therapies might eventually replace the more costly bone marrow transplant treatment, a standard last-ditch defence against cancer.