James P. Crowley, Professor of Medicine emeritus at Brown University, shared on LinkedIn:
“When Steven Rosenberg came to the National Cancer Institute on July 1, 1974 as Chief of the Surgery Branch (a position he has held continuously for the past 46 years) little if anything was known about the possible relationships between the immune system and growing cancers in humans.
“In the course of this work, we investigated many approaches that did not work in patients and that led to substantial delays in progress. “Our studies of non-specific lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cells intrigued us with its impact on small mouse tumors but its lack of effectiveness in a prospective randomized trial led us to ultimately abandon its use.
“In retrospect, we pursued it longer than we should have. We learned a great deal from our early studies targeting normal melanoma/melanocyte antigens but also painfully learned that targeting these normal non-mutated antigens including Her-2, CEA and MAGE-A3 could lead to the destruction of normal tissues and severe toxicities..”
In the course of his studies of cell transfer immunotherapy, he spent considerable time attempting to develop therapeutic cancer vaccines.
“We treated 428 patients with a variety of cancer vaccines using shared as well as unique tumor antigens without success and to the present time (2021) there have been no direct immunization strategies that have been effective in cancer treatment.”
..”We have demonstrated that about 80% of all patients with common epithelial cancers contain T cells that recognize the products of unique mutations in the autologous cancer and that targeting those mutations can sometimes lead to cancer regression.
We now have seen responses in selected patients with a variety of common cancers such as colon, breast, and cervical cancer and current efforts are working to further refine this approach.'”
Title: A Journey in Science: Immersion in the search for effective cancer immunotherapies
Author: Steven Rosenberg
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