Dying mum Judy’s treatment is hailed as a medical breakthrough

A MUM-OF-TWO who was dying of breast cancer has been cured by a miracle injection.

Judy Perkins, 52, is the first woman to have the cancer eradicated using a pioneering technique to turbo-charge her immune system.

Dr Simon Vincent, director at leading UK research charity Breast Cancer Now, said: “This is hugely exciting. We now need larger trials.”

Experts believe Judy’s case could offer a blueprint to help the body’s natural defences eradicate other cancers.

She had been given months to live after seven types of chemotherapy failed.

Judy, who has sons aged 18 and 20, had tumours the size of plums in her liver after the cancer BY MARTIN BAGOT reporters@dailyrecord.co.uk spread. But they vanished after treatment.

She said: “I had a tumour pressing on a nerve which meant I spent my time trying not to move at all to avoid pain shooting down my arm.

“I had given up fighting. I wanted to get dying over with. I had a bucket list of things to do, like going to the Grand Canyon.

“But within two weeks I could feel the tumours in my chest wall shrinking and I started to feel better. Now I’ve gone back to normal life.”

The case was discussed at a cancer conference in Chicago and published in journal Nature Medicine.

Scientists led by the National Cancer Institute in the US analysed a biopsy of Judy’s tumour and worked out a way to identify the 23 per cent of her white blood cells able to target and attack her cancer.

A small number of the T-cells were removed, grown in their billions and re-injected to boost her immune system.

The author of the paper on Judy’s case, Dr Steven Rosenberg, said: “The breakthrough here is in finding an approach able to identify the T-cells which target genetic mutations and in being able to grow them to this number.”

Judy, an engineer from Port St Lucie, Florida, was first diagnosed in 2003. She had a mastectomy but the cancer returned a decade later.

Judy said: “I’m beyond amazed I have been free of cancer for two years. Experts call it extended remission. I call it a cure.”