The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer

The chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute explains his pioneering achievements using "gene therapy" to cure cancer and shares the moving stories of those undergoing treatment. 60,000 first printing. $70,000 ad/promo.

Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, details the years of clinical and laboratory research that led to his developing the controversial cancer therapy using interleukin-2 (IL-2), a protein produced by the human immune system and synthesized in the lab. Treatment involves withdrawing a patient's cancer-killing white blood cells, mixing them with immune-activating IL-2 and injecting the mixture back into the body. Publicized by the medical establishment and the media as a breakthrough, IL-2 has, as Rosenberg notes here, severe side effects and cures only a minority of patients afflicted with only a few kinds of cancer. In addition, two critics of the medical establishment, Jane Heimlich ( What Your Doctor Won't Tell You ) and Ralph Moss ( The Cancer Industry ), have pointed out that IL-2 is prohibitively expensive and that treatment with it may require many weeks of hospitalization. Rosenberg also discusses his work on gene therapy, an experimental modality in which genetically altered white blood cells are reinserted in the cancer patient's bloodstream to attack the tumor. One feels that he overstates the promise of both types of treatment. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The exciting story of an idea whose time has come--and of the man who pioneered it. Rosenberg is that rare combination of surgeon and research scientist who early on decided he wanted to take on the challenge of cancer. His patients are all terminal, all failures to chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. His idea: attack the cancer cells with the body's own immune cells--in particular the specialized T lymphocytes capable of killing cells. The rub was how to get quantities of these cells, ensure that they would attack the cancer cells and only the cancer cells, not produce dire side effects, and achieve long-lasting effects. To do all this, Rosenberg and his team at the National Institutes of Health had to surmount enormous hurdles: extracting T cells from animals and humans, priming them to grow in tissue culture, making sure they retained their killing ability, infusing them back into the live animals and humans.... The work, the frustration, the day-to-day drudgery and disappointments are all told here, with the occasional moment of triumph that galvanizes the team. The story unfolds with the discovery of new families of growth factors--the interleukins- -and a new breed of lymphocyte: the tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte. There's also a commercial story with a competition between biotech companies and, as techniques evolve, a gene-therapy story involving inserting foreign genes into patients' T cells to increase their potency. And then there are the patients, all graphically presented. Many were not helped, but enough have survived, their tumors melted away, to demonstrate that there's a new and powerful cancer therapy on the horizon. And that there are scientists like Rosenberg doing their all to make the therapy work. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this exciting book, Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute and author of dozens of books and papers on cancer, uses his own experience of seeking new treatments for cancer patients to explain how scientists conduct medical research. Telling of the scientific dream to use the body's immune system to cure cancer, he discusses how the past decade has witnessed the attempt to treat cancer by manipulating natural host biologic functions using recombinant DNA technology, interleukin-2, interferon, and colony-stimulating factors. Using engrossing case histories, Rosenberg, a caring and sensitive expert, shares with his readers the agonizing successes and failures of advanced therapies that promise to join surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy as a fourth major treatment approach for cancer patients. Highly recommended.
- James Swanton, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.