This article in the NY Times that a man recently had a complete remission of melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, after treatment that boosted his immune system to fight the cancerous cells.
Doctors have long known that immune cells can effectively attack cancerous cells, but Dr. Steven Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute recently took a different approach. Instead of focusing on the “T cells”, they decided to focus on specific helper T cells that help lock into the cancerous cells and guide the killer cells to fight off the bad cells. Researchers drew blood from 8 patients and grew more of the helper T cells in the laboratory. They later infused the patients with 5 billion of the cells back. After two months, one patient had no signs of tumors in his skin, and after two years he showed no symptoms.
More research is needed since only one of the eight patients who underwent the treatment survived.
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