The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer

Description

The 2018 Nobel Prize was awarded to researchers who helped answer one of medicine's most confounding questions: Why do we know whenever we get a cold or a flu because of the immune defense symptoms, but need a test to know when we have cancer? The answer is what many are calling cancer's "penicillin moment," a revolutionary discovery in our understanding of cancer and how to beat it. In THE BREAKTHROUGH, Graeber guides readers through the revolutionary scientific research bringing immunotherapy out of the realm of the miraculous and into the forefront of twenty-first-century medical science. As advances in the fields of cancer research and the human immune system continue to fuel a therapeutic arms race among biotech and pharmaceutical research centers around the world, the next step-harnessing the wealth of new information to create modern and more effective patient therapies-is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, rapidly redefining our relationship with this all-too-human disease. Groundbreaking, riveting, and expertly told, THE BREAKTHROUGH is the story of the game-changing scientific discoveries that unleash our natural ability to recognize and defeat cancer, as told through the experiences of the patients, physicians, and cancer immunotherapy researchers who are on the front lines. This is the incredible true story of the race to find a cure, a dispatch from the life-changing world of modern oncological science, and a brave new chapter in medical history. Cover......Page 2 Title Page......Page 3 Copyright......Page 4 Table of Contents......Page 6 Dedication......Page 8 Preface......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 Chapter One: Patient 101006 JDS......Page 15 Chapter Two: A Simple Idea......Page 35 Chapter Three: Glimmers in the Darkness......Page 54 Chapter Four: Eureka, Texas......Page 79 Chapter Five: The Three E’s......Page 93 Chapter Six: Tempting Fate......Page 115 Chapter Seven: The Chimera......Page 137 Chapter Eight: After the Gold Rush......Page 148 Chapter Nine: It’s Time......Page 153 Photos......Page 161 Acknowledgments......Page 178 About the Author......Page 181 Also by Charles Graeber......Page 182 Appendix A: Types of Immunotherapies Now and Upcoming......Page 183 Appendix B: The Breakthrough, in Brief......Page 188 Appendix C: A Brief Anecdotal History of Disease, Civilization, and the Quest for Immunity......Page 193 Further Reading......Page 204 Notes......Page 205 Newsletters......Page 275