Breast cancer under attack: Striking scans reveal the vivid colours of killer cells and the body’s fight against them

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These striking images reveal vivid scans of rare cancer tumours found in the central nervous system under attack during treatment.

The colourful pictures, taken by the scanning electron micrograph (SEM), show the shockingly vibrant colours of cancer cells being attacked by chimeric antigen receptors (CAR).

CARs are linked to the T-cells of the immune system, which are extracted and modified to recognise and attack the patient’s cancer cells.

The kaleidoscopic images have been magnified over 2,000 times to make the cancer cells and CAR T-cells visible to the naked eye.

The pictures were taken by scientific photography studio Eye of Science, based in Reutlingen, Germany.

According to Cancer Research UK, there were 55,222 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 11,433 breast cancer-related deaths in the UK in 2014.

Around three quarters of breast cancer patients undergo surgical removal of their cancer as part of their treatment.

Dr Emma Smith, Cancer Research UK’s science information manager, said: ‘These stunning images show white blood cells, called CAR T cells, in action after they have been retrained to spot and attack cancer cells.

‘Immunotherapy is an important new family of treatments that is changing the outlook for some types of cancer.

‘This particular therapy, CAR T cells, is still experimental and researchers are studying how safe they are, and which types of cancer they might help treat.’