HOW THE SCIENTISTS PLOT TO BEAT CANCER

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Chemotherapy fuels a ‘survival of the strongest’ competition, in which cancer cells that respond to the drug wither while drug resistant cells survive.

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Those ‘strongest’ cells linger, multiplying and mutating, and waiting to strike again in the form of an aggressive tumour.

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The pioneering new treatment is called ‘evolutionary herding’. It uses new and existing drugs to target all cancer cells in a pincer-style movement, ‘feeding’ them one drug to make them weaker against other drugs, which move in later. The tumour is effectively penned in, herded like livestock into an ‘evolutionary dead end’. Using cancer drugs strategically, like this could either eradicate the disease or turn incurable illness into a manageable condition.