Cancer has long been one of the leading causes of mortality globally, currently accounting for as many as one in six deaths, so curing cancer remains one of humanity’s greatest goals.

It has been an excruciatingly elusive quest, marked more by hopes dashed than realised, because there are so many different forms of cancer – it is a class of diseases, rather than an overarching malady.

But breakthroughs do occur. Some promising revolutionary treatments are inflating hopes of eradicating at least some forms of cancer, particularly breast cancer, if not lead to the holy grail of a cure.

Previously, the treatment focus has been on chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and, for prostate and breast cancers, hormonal therapy. Different cancers vary widely, but they all involve cellular mutation.

The new trials focus not on the cancer itself, but on the mutations. The therapy involves finding genetic mutations in the cancer that can be recognised, and then attacked, by the immune system. Collecting these mutations from cancer calls and then reproducing them by the billions in the laboratory and pumping them back into the patient is generating remarkable results, including the apparent complete cure of a 52-year-old woman whose breast cancer had returned and metastasised widely.

The technology can be seen as generating “living drugs” from patients’ own calls. It shifts cancer treatment from generic to highly personalised. It is crucial to be sober and cautious about such research. This form of immunotherapy is in its early days, as is research into other treatments designed to starve various cancers of cellular nutrition.