Coley's toxins and alternative medicine in cancer treatment Article

Coley's toxins and alternative medicine in cancer treatment - Article Example Coley’s toxins are also referred to as Coley’s vaccine and mixed bacterial vaccine. William Coley’s contribution toward bacterial immunotherapy of tumors and cancers can never be overlooked; however, the myths associated with use of Coley’s toxins have hindered the path towards understanding the exact phenomenon that Coley claimed to have observed (Nauts et al., 1953). One of the supporting claims for using the Coley’s toxins is that they activate the defense mode of macrophages (Starnes, 1992). Naturally the tumor cells in the body are not considered as antigen, and therefore, macrophages predominantly exist in repair mode (Coley and Higinbotham, 1936). Thus the injection of foreign particles or foreign agents into the body instigates an immune response, due to which macrophages target the tumor (Bickels et al., 2002). One must not overlook the success rate of Coley’s treatment; perhaps his method was more efficient than the modern day immunotherapy trials. Coley injected 104 cancer patients with his toxins, out of which 50% survived was for more than 5 years, while 20% of the patients survived longer than 20 years(Tsung and Norton, 2006). The question to ponder is what are the causes that lead to the variation in outcomes of immunotherapy? Why some patients perform better with immunotherapies, and why some struggle to cope with it? Therefore, there is a dire need for understanding the mechanism of action of Coley’s toxins. Another component of the Coley’s toxins is lipopolysaccharide, which is a component of a bacterial cell; initially it was considered that the presence of these molecules activated the tumor necrosis factor or TNF(Wiemann and Starnes, 1994). TNF is a molecule that is naturally present in the body of an organism, and it is reported to play a crucial role in i nitiating necrotic activity