Cancer vaccines are showing promise at last

T OWARDS THE end of the 19th century William Coley, a surgeon in New York, made a surprising observation. One of his patients, close to death with a neck tumour, recovered after catching a serious bacterial skin infection. Intrigued, Coley tried to replicate the finding, injecting patients with a cocktail of killed bacteria to get their cancers to regress. He ended up treating over a thousand patients in this way, often successfully.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The long shots”

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https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/01/01/cancer-vaccines-are-showing-promise-at-last

A source: www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/01/01/cancer-vaccines-are-showing-promise-at-last