A woman with late-stage breast cancer which had metastasized throughout her body is in complete remission after a new immunotherapy treatment where her own immune cells were manipulated and used to kill cancer cells.

She had previously been treated with multiple rounds of chemotherapy and hormonal treatment but her cancer continued to progress.

The experimental treatment involves harvesting immune cells that are at the site of a tumor (from a biopsy), sequencing the tumor to find specific mutations, growing the patient’s immune cells in a petri dish that specifically target the tumor (based on the genomic data), and infusing the immune cells back into the patient where they migrate to the tumor and kill cancer cells.

This new treatment shows much promise but larger trials are still needed before this experimental therapy can be used to treat metastatic breast cancer (which still remains uncurable).