Cancer treatment turbocharges patients’ own blood cells to kill solid tumours for first time

A LIVING cancer drug has been proven to work against solid tumours for the first time.

Immune-boosting CAR-T therapy removes a patient’s white blood cells and engineers them into highly specialised cancer killers in a lab.

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They are then injected back into the patient and let loose against the disease.

It is currently only used for blood cell cancers like leukaemia but research by Peking University in China has found it can also work against tumours that form as lumps.

In a study of 266 people with stomach cancer, patients who received the treatment survived an average of 7.9 months compared to 5.5 months without it.

It took 3.3 months for their cancer to worsen, compared to 1.8 months without.

Study author Dr Changsong Qi said the results showed a “significant increase in progression-free survival and clinically meaningful increase in overall survival”.

More than 90 per cent of cancers are solid tumours that grow as a physical mass, including the big four of bowel, breast, lung and prostate.

The findings raise the hope that tens or even hundreds of thousands more patients will one day benefit from the pioneering approach using their own immune systems instead of harsh drugs.

Dr Carl June, of the University of Pennsylvania, is credited with inventing the therapy and commented: “This is a groundbreaking milestone for the field of CAR-T therapies against solid tumours.”

CAR-T therapy, full name chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, is an advanced type of immunotherapy that turbocharges the body’s own defences to fight off cancer.

It is intended to be more accurate and cause less collateral damage and side effects by only attacking cancerous cells and not healthy ones.

Young Sunderland fan Bradley Lowery took part in a major clinical trial of it in 2017 before dying from neuroblastoma aged six.

It is currently available on the NHS in England for certain types of leukaemia and lymphoma.

More than 650 forms of the treatment are now in development for solid cancers.

Dr John Haanen, from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, said: “There is clearly now evidence that this treatment can benefit patients with solid cancers. It is an important development.”

The study was published in The Lancet and presented at the conference of the American Society for Clinical Oncology.

Dr Catherine Elliott, of Cancer Research UK, said: “This is an encouraging early sign and further trials will now be needed.”