Breakthrough therapy could be used to tackle even more types of cancer

MILLIONS of cancer patients could benefit from blockbuster treatments that until now have been limited to a few forms of the disease.

A scientific breakthrough has unlocked access to revolutionary immunotherapy drugs for people with breast and brain cancer for whom the treatments previously did not work. Experts are already exploring the same technique for prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.

Immunotherapy drugs have rocked the medical world since they were unveiled in 015, with experts greeting them as a ‘new era’ in cancer treatment and the biggest breakthrough since the development of chemotherapy.

The drugs, a group called checkpoint inhibitors, harness the power of the immune system and fire it at tumours.

They have been shown to be twice as good as chemotherapy, with few of the side-effects, and often completely eradicate the disease. But the treatments – the best known of which are nivolumab and pembrolizumab – only seemed to work for certain forms of cancer such as lung, skin and kidney.

Scientists have now discovered that the drug’s power is unlocked for other forms if it is combined with a virus and injected into the bloodstream.

Two papers, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, show the virus flags up tumours hidden from the immune system, allowing killer cells to track down and destroy them.

In one study, by the University of Leeds and the Institute of Cancer Research in London, the technique was used to treat brain tumours in nine patients. In the second, by the University of Ottawa, the ‘triple negative’ form of breast cancer was cured in mice. Professor John Bell, of University of Ottawa, said: ‘When you infect a cancer cell with a virus, it raises a big red flag, which helps the immune system recognise and attack the cancer.’