This post has been updated.
The idea of using the body’s immune system to fight cancer has been around for more than a century, but dramatic breakthroughs have occurred only in the past half-dozen years.
“That’s when the tsunami came,” says Drew Pardoll, director of the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunology at Johns Hopkins University. Advances are spawning hundreds of clinical trials nationwide and generating intense interest from patients, physicians and investors. Yet researchers say the treatments, for now, help only a minority of patients. And they remember the past anti-cancer efforts that fizzled after initially showing promise — which explains why they say daunting hurdles and years of perseverance are still ahead.
