Are we on the verge of a cure for cancer?

Every day, around a thousand people in the UK are diagnosed with cancer. Last month the NHS approved groundbreaking drug, pembrolizumab, a life-extending treatment for women with ‘triple-negative’ breast cancer This week it was revealed that a pioneering vaccine developed by researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in the U.S. could prevent pancreatic cancer from returning after surgery — raising hopes of a cure. Dr Luis Diaz, one of the lead authors, declared: ‘This is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer.’ Although the trial, also from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, was small, it has triggered so much optimism there are now plans for those with other forms of the disease, including stomach, prostate and pancreatic cancer, to be trialled on the drug. Hopes of a cure arrive in a pioneering vaccine developed by researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in the U.S. could prevent pancreatic cancer from returning after surgery Professor Mokbel points out that this mechanism has already been harnessed in another groundbreaking drug, pembrolizumab — which the NHS last month approved as a life-extending treatment for women with ‘triple-negative’ breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. ‘But hopefully it marks the start of a new era; one which one day might even give pancreatic cancer a survival rate of 95 per cent.’ In fact, only this week a report in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that an experimental treatment that involved tweaking the genes of immune cells appeared to have been successful in halting the progression of one woman’s advanced pancreatic cancer.