This new therapy was decidedly different from the treatments he’d received before: Instead of attacking his cancer with poisons like chemotherapy and radiation, the Philadelphia doctors taught Nick’s own immune cells to become more adept at killing the cancer.

Two months later, he emerged cancer-free. It’s been six months since Nick, now 15, received the personalized cell therapy, and doctors still can find no trace of leukemia in his system.

Trusting her intuition led to two cancer diagnoses

Twenty-one other young people received the same treatment, and 18 of them, like Nick, went into complete remission — one of them has been disease-free for 20 months. The Penn doctors released their findings this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

“It gives us hope that this is a cure,” Nick’s father says. “They’re really close. I think they’re really onto something.”