Cutting-edge therapy builds on an age-old discovery

摘要

A Hundred and fifty years ago a New York doctor, William Coley, read about a patient whose bone cancer vanished after a high fever. Coley wondered whether there was a link between the fever and the cancer remission, and began intentionally injecting bacteria into the tumors of his patients to give them severe infections. His unorthodox methods worked, and Coley successfully treated hundreds of cancer patients, despite never quite understanding why. Now scientists have figured out why Coley's technique had such significant effects, and are developing his idea to come up with revolutionary advances in cancer therapy.