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liquid_bluing | 1 year ago

I found this book, which traces the surprisingly long and fascinating history of using immunotherapy to treat cancer up to the present day, well, fascinating:

The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Breakthrough:_Immunotherap...

My uncle died of a glioblastoma, and shortly after I read this book, I was myself diagnosed with cancer (treated conventionally, hopefully cured). Immunotherapies like mRNA vaccines seem to be our best hope for finding reliable, permanent cures for a lot of different cancers. I am sorry that for many of our loved ones, a cure will have come too late.

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rob74|1 year ago

> the surprisingly long and fascinating history of using immunotherapy to treat cancer

Well yeah, it has been known for a long time that cancer can do what it does because of the immune system's failure to eliminate the "defective" cells. Also, there are the rare "spontaneous remissions" where, for some reason, the immune system eventually catches up and manages to destroy the cancer. So there have been many attempts to harness the immune system in cancer treatment. Glad to see that all that work is finally bearing fruit (fingers crossed)...