New approaches to tame the immune system in the fight against cancer are getting us closer to a future where cancer becomes a curable disease. Personalized vaccines, cell therapy, gene editing and microbiome treatments are four technologies that will change the way cancer is treated.

Curing cancer is certainly one of the big challenges of the 21st century. Our knowledge of cancer has greatly improved in the last two decades. This has revealed the huge variability that can be found between not only different types of cancer, but also between patients with the same type of cancer.

It seems increasingly evident that there won’t be a single ‘cure’. Rather, each patient will be treated accordingly to their specific needs. But for personalized medicine to become a reality, we need a range of therapies wide enough to cover the whole spectrum of cancer.