Hopes are growing that up to half of cancers could be fought using the body’s own immune system, with doctors increasingly optimistic that drugs to help patients to heal themselves will be the next frontier.
Pharmaceutical giants — including AstraZeneca, Merck, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline — are scrambling to get therapies into the clinic as regulators agree to help to fast-track approval after spectacular early trials.
Sergio Quezada, a Cancer Research UK scientist at the University College London Cancer Institute, said: “It’s very exciting to see a range of new immunotherapy treatments becoming available for cancer patients. Cancers can only grow by finding a way to escape or confuse the immune system. These new treatments work by either encouraging immune cells to recognise cancer as a