A woman’s advanced stage breast cancer that metastasized throughout her body was completely eradicated with her own immune cells, marking the first time immunotherapy has successfully treated late-stage breast cancer.
According to The Guardian, Florida engineer Judy Perkins, 49, was selected to undergo the radical therapy after rounds of chemo failed to cure her breast cancer. She’d been given just three years to live. The immunotherapy used Perkins’ “own immune cells to find and destroy cancer cells that have formed in the body,” and doctors at the U.S. National Cancer Institute say she’s now been cancer-free for two years.
“It feels miraculous, and I am beyond amazed that I have now been free of cancer for two years,” Perkins said. Doctors call her recovery a sign that science is at the “cusp of a major revolution” in figuring out how to treat cancer through all of its mutations. They caution that the treatment must still go through clinical trials and may not work for all cases.