Lung cancer was once considered pretty much a death sentence.
Just two decades ago, it was near-impossible to treat. Doctors had only a handful of drugs at their disposal - and most patients were given just months to live.

A mere 17 per cent of those diagnosed with lung cancer in 1990 were alive a year later, and scientific progress in treating it had also stalled.

Even as the discovery of new treatments for breast and bowel cancer helped boost survival rates, the outlook for those with lung cancer remained bleak. Today it is still the UK's biggest cancer killer, accounting for one in five of all cancer deaths, but now - at last - there is reason for hope.

Over the past decade, thanks to huge leaps in scientific understanding, an arsenal of highly targeted lung cancer treatments have been developed.

Now a new analysis of US data, published in The New England Journal Of Medicine, reveals promising signs that this could be leading to a drop in deaths from the most common form of the disease.

Deaths from non-small-cell lung cancer, which accounts for about eight in ten cases, have been gradually declining over the past few decades due to fewer people smoking (the main cause of lung cancer).

However, from 2013, as new treatments were launched, the decline in deaths doubled, with rates plummeting by almost 20 per cent in three years.

In June 2018, Bob Pain, pictured, started treatment with pembrolizumab, covered privately by his health insurance - and after just a few months, scans showed the tumours in his liver and lung had reduced by half

Experts soon expect to see a similar trend in the UK, where doctors report that patients are surviving longer than ever before thanks to medical breakthroughs.

'When I started as a consultant nearly 15 years ago, lung cancer was a next-to-impossible disease to treat,' says Professor Sanjay Popat, หวย ฮานอย consultant oncologist at London's Royal Marsden Hospital.

'There was no hope, people were downbeat and patients would say, 'What is the point?' But we now have a much deeper understanding of the biology of the disease.

We have newer treatments and we have new surgical and radiotherapy techniques.

'And as a consequence, people who would on average pass away within less than a year historically are now living in excess of two years, three years, even five years.

It is absolutely fantastic to see.'

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