A woman with advanced ovarian cancer has become the first patient in the world to receive a pioneering new therapy. The therapy, known as ZI-MA4-1, will be tested on people with ovarian cancer, lung cancer, sarcomas and head and neck cancer in a trial led by the Christie, with a site also at the Royal Marsden in London. Firstly, it harnesses the body’s natural killer (NK) cells, which are specialist immune cells that destroy abnormal ones. Unlike some personalised treatments, ZI-MA4-1 is designed as an “off-the-shelf” therapy that uses immune cells from donors. Only around 15% of women survive ovarian cancer for five years or more after they are diagnosed.