World first as woman’s terminal breast cancer ‘cured’ by her own cells

A woman with advanced breast cancer is in remission after an injection harvested from her own immune system in what scientists have described as a world first.

Judy Perkins, 52, a mother of two in the United States, was given months to live after seven types of chemotherapy failed and she had developed tumours the size of fists in her liver. She had undergone a mastectomy in 2003 after the cancer was first diagnosed, but it returned in 2013 and spread aggressively.

There is no known cure for breast cancer patients whose disease has spread so widely. But Perkins, an engineer from Florida, has been cancer-free for two years and leads an active life.

Using a technique called “adoptive cell transfer”, scientists removed a tumour from her chest and determined which friendly T-cells within it were capable of recognising the harmful cancer cells. Over eight weeks, the team at the US’s National Cancer Institute harvested the T-cells into an army of 82 billion and then injected them back into the patient, turbocharging her immune system.

The method has been used with mixed success on patients with bowel, cervical and liver cancers, but this is the first time it has been tried on someone with breast cancer. Experts believe the case, discussed at an American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, could mark a major breakthrough.

The institute said: “This fascinating and exciting study in a single breast cancer patient provides a major ‘proofof-principle’ step forward, in showing how the power of the immune system can be harnessed to attack even the most difficult-to-treat cancer.”

— Daily Telegraph