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Cancer-fighting cells harvested from a mother-of-six have been used to fight the tumours invading her body - a treatment hailed by doctors as a 'blueprint for treating the disease'.Melinda Bachini, from Billings, Montana, was diagnosed with a rare bile duct cancer on her son's 14th birthday in December 2009.
Doctors warned the 45-year-old she had just months to live.
But experts at the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. have developed a new treatment, hailed as a 'blueprint for fighting cancer', successfully shrinking Mrs Bachini's tumours by a quarter.
Melinda Bachini, from Montana in the U.S. was diagnosed with a rare form of bile duct cancer in December 2009
The mother-of-six was given just months to live. When a course of powerful chemotherapy failed to shrink her tumours, Mrs Bachini researched her options on the internet, stumbling across a trial that was taking place at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland
The case, reported in the journal Science, involved experts harvesting Mrs Baldhini's own immune cells - those which were identified as having the right tools to attack the tumours.
The cells were then replicated in the laboratory, and implanted back into Mrs Bachini's body.
They have now been attacking and shrinking her tumour for the last six months.
'It's the first time we have been able to actually target a specific mutation in the immune system,' Dr Steven Rosenburg told NBC.
'It represents a blueprint for how to do this. It is a new method for potentially attacking any kind of cancer.'
While her hair is now growing back and she is once again chasing around after her three youngest children, Mrs Bachini is realistic - she still has cancer.
When her disease came to light, cancer was not on Mrs Bachini's radar, she said.
Doctors were carrying out tests to detect gallstones and found a mass in her liver.
After breaking the news, medics started the 45-year-old on a course of chemotherapy, which damaged the nerves in her ears, hands and feet.
But the treatment failed to shrink her tumours. Researching the options available to her, Mrs Bachini found details of a trial taking place at the National Institutes of Health.
The 45-year-old, pictured with her husband and six children, became the first patient to have her own immune cells harvested from her body, grown in a lab and implanted back into her body to fight the disease
Mrs Bachini's tumours have now shrunk by around 25 per cent, since undergoing the pioneering new treatment, hailed by the team behind it as a 'blueprint for treating cancer'
She signed up and started treatment in March 2012.
The study centres on immune cells known as CD4 T-cells, which can detect cancer cells and in some cases destroy the disease.
The process of cancer immunotherapy, has for years, tried to pinpoint those T-cells and replicate them for patients.
Dr Rosenburg said it has been difficult to perform the process in epithelial cancers - solid tumours which account for around 80 per cent of all cancers.
But he said recent advances in genetic sequencing have meant it is now more likely to be successful.
His team removed a tumour from Mrs Bachini's left lung, and managed to extract the T-cells found attacking the disease.
Over the course of a month, the experts nurtured the cells, growing them in a lab.
A powerful bout of chemotherapy was then prescribed to kill off any other immune cells, working within Mrs Bachini's body.
Once the chemotherapy was complete, the T-cells were implanted.
CHOLANGIOCARINOMA - A RARE BILE DUCT CANCER AFFECTING THOUSANDS
Bile duct cancer affects around 2,500 people in the U.S. and another 1,000 people in the UK each year
The five-year relative survival rate for early stage cases of the disease is only about 30 per cent.
Bile ducts are tubes that carry bile. The main function of bile is to break down fats in food to help our digestion.
Bile is made by the liver and stored in the gall bladder. The bile ducts connect the liver to the gall bladder.
The cause of most bile duct cancers is unknown. A number of conditions, including the chronic inflammatory bowel condition ulcerative colitis can increase a person's risk of developing cancer.
Those born with congenital abnormalities of the bile ducts, such as choledochal cysts, also have a higher risk of developing the rare cancer.
In Africa and Asia bile duct cancers are thought to be caused by an infection caused by a parasite known as the liver fluke.
The disease can strike at any age, but more than two in three cases occur in those aged over 65 years old.
Cancer in the bile ducts causes the tubes to block, prohibiting the flow of bile from the liver to the intestines.
It causes the bile to seep back into the blood causing a person to become jaundice - their skin and whites of their eyes become yellow.
Other symptoms include abdominal discomfort, a loss of appetite, high temperatures and weight loss.
Source: Macmillan Cancer Support
By this time Dr Rosenburg and his team had managed to develop a technique to map the tumour and find the mutations.
After stringing together all the mutated DNA, the scientists tested it against a sample of their patient's T-cells - a feat that would not have been possible were it not for the new high-throughput genome sequencing technique.
The team found the precise T-cells that could attack the tumours and once again cultivated them in the lab before implanting them back into Mrs Bachini's body.
For the last six months her tumours have once again been shrinking in size.
She added: 'When I went into this trial I felt like I had nothing to lose but everything to gain.'
'Life definitely doesn’t stop because you have cancer,' she said.
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