The study of Abs dominated studies of immunology until the middle of the 20th century when it became apparent that the cellular arm of the immune system played a major role in immunologic reactions. The origins of cellular immunology are recent. Several seminal events in the development of modern cellular immunology set the stage for the translation of immunologic concepts into effective immunotherapies for patients with cancer.
This patient and thousands that subsequently received IL-2 played a major role in the introduction of immunotherapy into the mainstream of cancer treatment. She was the first cancer patient to respond to the administration of IL-2 and, thus, the first to demonstrate that a purely immunologic maneuver that stimulated T lymphocytes could mediate complete destruction of large, invasive, vascularized cancers in humans. This patient has remained disease-free for the past 29 years. Within one month after treatment, biopsy of one of her tumors showed extensive necrosis, after two months, all tumor deposits were shrinking, and a few months later, all evidence of cancer was gone.
In November 1984, a 33-year-old woman with metastatic melanoma who had progressed through multiple prior treatments received the aggressive infusion of rIL-2.
