Personalised cancer drug 'boosts the body's natural defences'

A personalised cancer vaccine designed to boost the body's own natural defences when used alongside chemotherapy shows'promising signs' after a clinical trial. The treatment is created by taking a biopsy of a tumour and then using artificial intelligence to identify certain proteins not recognised by the immune system. They use these proteins to create tailor-made vaccines for each individual cancer patients and then administer them alongside immunotherapy drug atezolizumab. So far researchers have only tested it on patients with advanced cancers and just 8 per cent saw their tumours shrink - with 49 per cent seeing no change. An international team of researchers found the treatment, known as RO7198457, was'well tolerated' by patients and the they experienced'low-to-moderate' side effects. This is early days in the development of the treatment as the clinical trials were only designed to test its safety, further testing is needed to see how effective it is.