GETTY Scientists hope to have developed a new wonder drug that teaches the immune system to kill cancer

Trials are under way to find out if a therapy initially developed for leukaemia sufferers could help patients with head, neck and mouth cancer. Experimental drug AMG 319 is designed to trigger an immune response by “switching off” certain types of white blood cells. Rapid cell division is a hallmark of cancer so biotech giant Amgen has been testing its effectiveness in treating types of the disease where white blood cells divide uncontrollably, like leukaemia and lymphomas. But phase II trials on 54 patients at Poole Hospital, Southampton General Hospital and the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre will examine its impact on people with squamous cell carcinoma.

GETTY The drug triggers an immune response by 'switching off' certain types of white blood cells

It is the 10th treatment in a scheme to develop experimental drugs that have been de-prioritised or are only being tested in certain groups of patients. The drug could eventually be used to help immune systems fight a multitude of cancers. Professor Christian Ottensmeier, from the Southampton Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, said: “This is a really exciting trial because we’re using this drug in solid tumours for the first time. It also tries a whole new concept of cancer therapy in solid cancers for the first time. “We hope that after taking the drug, patients will have more cancer-fighting immune cells in their tumour. We will study in detail how the immune cells behave before and after AMG 319 and whether they have become more effective.”

PH Clatterbridge Cancer Centre is one of the three facilities carrying out trials of the drug

Certain types of immune cells, known as “killer” T cells, recognise a tumour as a threat and respond in the same way they do with an infection and destroy them. But another type of T cell, known as a “regulatory” T cell, hinders the process by trying to reduce the ‘killer’ T cells response. The drug is designed to “switch off” a molecule in our cells and laboratory experiments showed it leads to the destruction of cancer cells. It stopped the “regulatory” T cells suppressing the immune response, but did not affect “killer” T cells’ ability to destroy cancer cells.

GETTY The drug could eventually be used to help immune systems fight a multitude of cancers