Currently in China, doctors have created a new treatment for cancer and are using it on patients. This treatment uses a new method that involves using the cells from the patient’s own immune system. After these cells are taken from the patient, they are genetically altered using a gene-editing tool called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats).

Researchers are currently testing this procedure on a man named Shaorong Deng, a 53-year old man that has advanced cancer of the esophagus. Over the course of this IV treatment, Deng will receive millions of cells whose genomes have been altered to help bolster his immune system. The procedure will takes at least an hour. “I can only hope that it completely – completely gets rid of the cancer,” said Deng.

According to Dr. Shixiu Wu, the president of the cancer hospital in Hangzhou, China.  “Deng is participating in the most advanced study in China testing CRISPR on sick people.”

Other than this test, China has also done at least eight other studies of CRISPR on different forms of cancer, including treatments of lung, bladder, cervix and prostate cancer. This level of innovation has made them global leaders in this emerging field.

“China is starting to pull ahead of other parts of the world – maybe for the time – in regards to biomedicine,” said Hallam Stevens, an anthropologist at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who studies Chinese bioscience. “They’ve been really investing heavily in it over the last couple of decades and it’s starting to pay off in a big way.”

It is still too early to draw firm conclusions about how effective the treatment will be or the full extent of its possible side effects. However, if early tests are any indication, this immuno-centric treatment has the potential to help patients all around the world gain hope and win the long, hard battle against cancer.