A therapy that retrains the body's immune system to fight cancer has provoked excitement after more than 90% of terminally ill patients reportedly went into remission.

White blood cells were taken from patients with leukemia, modified in the lab and then placed back in the body. Experts in the study have said the trial was exciting, but still only the first steps in finding answers. The news exploded of this new treatment at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Washington D.C. this week.

The lead scientist, Professor Stanley Riddell from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer research Center in Seattle, said all other treatments had failed in these patients and they had only two-to-five months to live. Riddell told the conference that: "The early data is unprecedented."

In the trial, cells from the immune system called killer t-cells were removed from dozens of patients. The cells normally act like mini explosions destroying infected tissue. The researchers genetically modified the t-cells to engineer a new targeting mechanism - with the technical name of chimeric antigen receptors - to target acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Professor Stanley Riddell of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said "Essentially what this process does is it genetically reprograms the T-cell to seek out and recognize and destroy the patient's tumor cells." "The patients were really at the end of the line in terms of treatment options and yet a single dose of this therapy put more than ninety percent of these patients in complete remission where we can't detect any of these leukemia cells."

Seven of the patients developed cytokine release syndrome so severe that they required intensive care and a further two patients died. The side-effects are much greater than conventional leukemia treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy which work in the majority of patients. This treatment works much better on a blood cancer like leukemia as opposed to "solid" tumors such as breast cancer.

Dr. Alan Worsley, from Cancer Research UK, said that while the field was incredibly exciting, "this is a baby step". Worsley continued: "We've been working for a while using this type of technology, genetically engineering cells. So far it's really shown some promise in this type of blood cancer. It should be said that in most cases standard treatment for blood cancer is quite effective, so this is for rare patients where that hasn't worked. The real challenge now is how do to get this to work for other cancers, how do to get it to work for what's known as solid cancers, cancers in the tissue?"

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