“personalised cancer treatment” could be the future of medicine.
Real consideration began when it was considered that a tumour could be attacked if the “brake” was taken off the immune system. “It's a bit like a barrier comes down and the immune system can get into the tumour,” Prof O’Neill said.“The immune system is always attacking tumours - a little tumour might develop in all of us, and the immune system eliminates it.”Prof O’Neill said ‘checkpoint inhibitors’ have been developed to allow the immune system to fully attack a tumour.
According to Prof O’Neill, the overall response rate to checkpoint inhibitors is 20% to 40% at the moment across most forms of cancer.More recently, there has been studies into whether a vaccine could prevent cancer in the first place.