British researchers have developed a treatment that can be used to stop the disease returning after chemotherapy or bone marrow transplant.

Eventually it is hoped the drug, which activates the body's own immune system against the leukaemia, could be used to treat other types of cancers.

The first patients will be treated in the New Year as part of a small clinical trial at King's College London.

The patients in the trial have the form known as Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), the most common form in adults. Even with aggressive treatment half would usually find the disease returns.

The idea behind cancer 'vaccines" is not necessarily to prevent the disease. Instead, once a patient has been diagnosed, the 'vaccine' programmes the immune system to hunt down cancer cells and destroy them.

The vaccine then prompts the immune system to recognise leukaemia cells if they return which prevents a relapse of the disease.

The vaccine is created by removing cells from the patient's blood and manipulating them in the laboratory.

The cells are given two genes which act as flags to help identify the leukaemia. It effectively focuses and boosts the immune system's ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells.

The research is due to be published in the Journal of Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy shortly.

Leukaemia is a cancer of the white blood cells and bone marrow and affects around 7,200 patients a year. Around 4,300 die from the disease annually.

Treatment comes in two stages - chemotherapy to rid the body of the disease, then to prevent it returning either further chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant.

Latest survival rates show that more than half the people with leukaemia die within five years of diagnosis.

The study led by Professors Ghulam Mufti and Farzin Farzaneh and Dr Nicola Hardwick at University College London, has involved intricate work to develop a man-made virus, similar to HIV, which carries the two genes into the immune system.

Prof Farzaneh, Professor of Molecular Medicine at King's College London, said if the trials are successful then it could "rolled out" to treat other leukaemias and cancers.

"It is the same concept as normal vaccines. The immune system is made to see something as foreign and can then destroy it itself. This has the chance to be curative."

The work, which has taken 20 years to develop, has more recently been funded by the Department of Health and various charities including the Leukaemia Research Fund (LRF) and the Elimination of Leukaemia Fund (ELF).

In the initial stages patients will be enrolled in the trial if they have had chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.

If early trials are successful the vaccine may be tested in patients who cannot have a bone marrow transplant because they are unsuitable or a match cannot be found.

Dr David Grant, scientific director of the charity Leukaemia Research, said: "Vaccines against cancer are becoming a very interesting area of research and can offer a very beneficial alternative to punishing chemotherapy.

"However it is very early days and we need to see the results of these trials before we know if this potential is going too be realised."