Immune cells trained to fight cancer

What if your own immune system could fight cancer? Scientists in Hong Kong are currently trying to make this type of treatment a reality, by training patient's white blood cells to treat their nose and throat cancer.

While the science is undoubtedly complicated, the idea is fairly straightforward. Scientist plan to extract blood from cancer patients, take it a lab, and teach the white blood cells, or T-cells to fight cancer. Once trained, they'll put the cells back in the patient's body, with the hopes that they'll remember what to do, while also instructing the body's other T-cells to follow suit.

Nose cancer in particular has been targeted because contracted it is often linked to a virus called Epstein-Barr virus. If the procedure is successful, scientists hope to apply the theory to other virus-related cancers, such as liver cancer, which is linked to hepatitis B.