Highlights an approach from 1890's that seems to have been abandoned but appears to merit further investigation:
"In 1891, surgeon William Coley treated a patient with a sarcoma by injecting Streptococcus pyogenes culture into the tumor, and caused a complete regression and 8-year remission, after a severe erysipelas infection from which the patient almost died. Heat-killed Streptococci were safer, but didn’t have a tumor-shrinking effect. Adding heat-killed Serratia marrescens to the mixture made it effective again, and caused 60 out of 210 (29%) terminally ill sarcoma patients to have relapse-free survival of more than 10 years.
Coley’s preparations, known as “Coley Toxins”, were in use until 1963, when the Estes-Kefauver Act ruled that drugs had to prove safety and efficacy to be FDA-approved.[15]
A retrospective review [17] published in in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine compared 128 Coley cases from 1890 to 1960 with 1675 controls from SEER who received a cancer diagnosis in 1983. Patients were matched by age, site, stage, and radiation treatment status. 10-year survival rate was not significantly different for Coley’s patients vs. modern controls, which suggests that Coley toxins were of comparable efficacy to chemotherapy."
"In 1891, surgeon William Coley treated a patient with a sarcoma by injecting Streptococcus pyogenes culture into the tumor, and caused a complete regression and 8-year remission, after a severe erysipelas infection from which the patient almost died. Heat-killed Streptococci were safer, but didn’t have a tumor-shrinking effect. Adding heat-killed Serratia marrescens to the mixture made it effective again, and caused 60 out of 210 (29%) terminally ill sarcoma patients to have relapse-free survival of more than 10 years.
Coley’s preparations, known as “Coley Toxins”, were in use until 1963, when the Estes-Kefauver Act ruled that drugs had to prove safety and efficacy to be FDA-approved.[15]
A retrospective review [17] published in in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine compared 128 Coley cases from 1890 to 1960 with 1675 controls from SEER who received a cancer diagnosis in 1983. Patients were matched by age, site, stage, and radiation treatment status. 10-year survival rate was not significantly different for Coley’s patients vs. modern controls, which suggests that Coley toxins were of comparable efficacy to chemotherapy."