Therapy Made from Patient’s Immune System

Doctors at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) revealed in a letter published in Nature Medicine that an ongoing clinical trial has led to the complete regression of metastatic breast cancer in a patient who’d been unresponsive to traditional treatments. Nearly two years later, that patient is still cancer-free.

The promising news is the result of immunotherapy—a type of cancer treatment that stimulates the body’s own immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells.

This story is a hopeful sign that this type of personalized treatment may be able to help other patients with metastatic breast cancer, and other types of cancer, as well. But the therapy isn’t available or ready for widespread use just yet: More research is needed for doctors to understand why it works for some people and not for others