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- <text id=92TT2468>
- <title>
- Nov. 02, 1992: Cancer Counterattack
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Nov. 02, 1992 Bill Clinton's Long March
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 23
- HEALTH & SCIENCE
- Cancer Counterattack
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A vaccine made from patients' own cells helps treat B-cell
- lymphoma
- </p>
- <p> The human immune system is a powerful defense against
- assaults by bacteria and viruses from outside the body, but now
- scientists may have found a way to turn it against a homegrown
- assailant: cancer. A research group at Stanford University has
- developed a vaccine that stimulates the body to fight B-cell
- lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system that strikes 20,000
- Americans every year and is especially hard to treat. They did
- it by removing cancerous cells from nine patients and treating
- the cells to make them more irritating to the immune system.
- Then they were reinjected under the patients' skin. In two
- cases, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine,
- tumors actually shrank, while five other patients showed
- markedly increased immune-system activity. The vaccine isn't a
- preventive and can only be used on a single patient and against
- this type of cancer. But the technique may someday be used on
- other cancers and also on such diseases as multiple sclerosis,
- diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-