Immune therapy

Many of you may have already heard of this new therapy thought to be an extremely promising way to treat cancer.

This innovation is back on everybody’s lips, and for good reason, as one woman with terminal-stage cancer actually survived thanks to experimental immune therapy treatment.

The specific therapy this 52-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer received was personalised T-cell immunotherapy. This is where, using the patient’s own immune cells, Dr Steven Rosenberg was able to eradicate six tumours.

After culturing the most efficient of the patient’s T lymphocytes, these were then reinjected so they could accurately attack her breast cancer. After 6 weeks, the targeted tumour had shrunk to half its initial size. Laszlo Radvanyi, a researcher at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, underlined that this was a first for such advanced-stage cancer.