Jab brought ‘unprecedentedly strong responses’ in patients whose disease had become resistant to chemotherapy and immunotherapy

In an international trial spanning 11 countries, the injection was offered to patients whose cancer had spread or come back and whose disease had failed to respond to other treatments.

In the trial, 102 patients with head and neck cancer, the world’s sixth most common cancer, were given the jab. Tumours shrank or disappeared completely in 43 patients, including 28 whose tumours shrank significantly and 15 who saw them eradicated entirely.