Is new treatment a breakthrough in fight against cancer?

A NEW cancer treatment is being hailed as the biggest breakthrough since chemotherapy.
Researchers say it could even replace chemotherapy within five years and say it works by teaching the body to attack tumours.
Called ‘immunotherapy,’ it works by training the immune system to attack the cancer cells within the body.
Trials show that it has eradicated tumours in patients who were expected to survive for only a few months and they are now leading normal lives. The treatment is said to be effective in about 50 per cent of cases.
Presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago, the researchers said it worked well on lung and skin cancer and has been effective against kidney, bladder, and head and neck cancers.
In one British trial, patients with advanced skin cancer who would have been declared terminally ill are now back at work and some may never need treatment again.
Professor Peter Johnson, director of medical oncology at Cancer Research UK, said: “The evidence suggests we are at the beginning of a whole new era for cancer treatments.”
The treatment could replace chemotherapy which was not routinely used on cancer patients until the 1960s and 1970s and causes patients side effects such as tiredness, sickness and hair loss and makes patients susceptible to infection.