Cancer+Immunology. This spring I'm taking a seminar called Cancer and Immunology. In the seminar, we discuss recent advances in immunity-based treatments for cancer.

I—being the odd guy out who has never formally taken an immunology course—naturally got tapped to be the second speaker. But, but, my sweet Lord, this is an exciting field. I had no idea where the field was at until reading these papers...

One of the papers was written as long ago as 1994. The researchers knew at the time that certain tumor cells are detected and automatically destroyed by the immune system, while others evade immune surveillance. Of course, those aberrant cells that evade the immune system can continue unchecked growth, which nobody wants. The researchers hypothesized that if they cultured tumor cells ex vivo and fused them with a particular type of white blood cell, that this fused hybrid cell might jumpstart the immune system and serve as an effective vaccine against the cancer.

They do exactly this in lab rats, using a chemically induced liver cancer cell line. The long and short of it is that their procedure resulted in 75% survival rate for immunized rats, compared to a 0% survival rate for the control group. The "vaccine" even worked if it was given after implantation of the tumor.

This would have incredible consequences if it ever worked in human patients. If you developed certain types of cancer, imagine that you could go to a lab and have two biopsies done. Two weeks later, you drive to your oncologist for a subcutaneous injection of some of these cells back under your skin. Within days, your own immune system suddenly begins to attack your tumor, and you may go into remission possibly without ever undergoing chemotherapy.

It may be a long, long way off, but these types of treatments are certainly in the pipeline... exciting times!