This will be the future of cancer treatment. Individually engineered cells from a patients own immune system used to kill cancer. I know caution is urged as the mechanisms arent fully understood, (yet) and that several people were made very ill with two dying but 90% in remission WOW! after being given just 2 to 5 months life expectancy and for those at the end of the line with all other options exhausted. I would take that chance right now.

With the rapid advance in science the method will be tweaked making it safer, and to include cancers other than blood, and hopefully children born today will look back on this era when in their sixties, and remark how barbaric and backwards our treatments were. Themselves living in an era of treatable cancer.

What a good news article.   Kim

Thanks for your reply, Kim and interesting to read your thoughts. And of course we all look to the day when everyone who has cancer will survive the disease.

Nick Peel from Cancer Research UK echoes yours thoughts and published a really detailed blog post, which you can read here. Below is an extract:

"Immunotherapy will play a huge part in cancer treatment in the future. That’s something we know for sure.

But whether it will come in the form of drugs that release the ‘brakes’ on the immune system, cell therapies like those in the news today, or something completely new, working out exactly how it will be used, and in which patients, is an urgent challenge for researchers,

What we do know is that it will need to find a place among other, successful treatments that are already available. And today’s reports are a great example of this – offering a way to treat patients for whom current approaches don’t work. So we’re eagerly awaiting the full publication of the US team’s findings.

But we also need to focus on immunotherapies that target other cancers in desperate need of new treatments.

Hopefully then, with larger, longer-term studies, we will be able to talk about immunotherapy truly offering lasting cures for patients with cancer."

Best wishes,

Kirsty

Hi Kirsty thanks for the link to Nick Peel's blog post. Very interesting read adding a bit of background without pouring cold water on the research. Personally I think its very exciting and even if this method is found wanting it paves the way for further and parallel lines of enquiry. Kim

You're welcome Kim. Absolutely, it is definitely exciting and of course we will keep you all updated on any progress.

Best wishes,

Kirsty