"Even a few years ago the notion that any clinician would look at a patient and deliver a therapy which wasn't going to directly affect the cancer in any way, shape or form, would have been pretty radical. But that's what's happening.

"We're seeing impressive results with cells called natural killer cells ... So you have the possibility of developing cell banks that could be used for anyone. You would call them up and deliver them to the clinic just hours before they were needed to be infused."

Until this year, scientists thought it would be impossible to import a stranger's immune cells, because the benefits would be cancelled out by the immunosuppressant drugs needed to ensure the body did not reject them. But in 2018, scientists realised that immune cells are unlike other cells as they can survive well in another person, opening the door to transplants.

More than 350,000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year, and 30 years ago just one in four people would have survived for 10 years.

But radical advances over the past decade have seen the number of people surviving for at least a decade rise to 50 per cent and the team at The Francis Crick Institute want to make that 75 per cent in the next 15 years.