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A Cure Within Scientists Unleashing the Immune System to Kill Cancer
The way we treat cancer is about to change forever. This revolution—and it is precisely that—was sparked not by the invention of a new drug, but by the evolution of an entirely new way of thinking about and managing cancer. Going forward, doctors will not use pharmaceuticals to attack tumors—not directly. Rather, the oncologist will treat the patient’s immune system with a drug, and then the patient will treat the tumor.
Based entirely on interviews with the investigators, this book is the story of the immuno-oncology pioneers. It’s a story of failure, resurrection, and success. It’s a story about science, it’s a story about discovery, and intuition, and cunning. It’s a peek into the lives and thoughts of some of the most gifted medical scientists on the planet.
This is not a textbook. This is a life book. This technology will save/is saving lives, and the book celebrates the living, breathing, thinking, charming, arrogant, funny, obstinate, amazing human beings who are making immuno-oncology happen.
Based entirely on interviews with the investigators, this book is the story of the immuno-oncology pioneers. It’s a story of failure, resurrection, and success. It’s a story about science, it’s a story about discovery, and intuition, and cunning. It’s a peek into the lives and thoughts of some of the most gifted medical scientists on the planet.
This is not a textbook. This is a life book. This technology will save/is saving lives, and the book celebrates the living, breathing, thinking, charming, arrogant, funny, obstinate, amazing human beings who are making immuno-oncology happen.
Hardcover
Published January 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 25, 2021
Immunotherapy is the most simple and obvious idea in medicine. Get your body to heal itself by dispatching its immune system whenever needed to fight disease. Immunotherapy is also the most difficult and elusive idea in medicine. Trying to apply it to individual patients is the most difficult problem in medicine. Getting your body to accept manipulated corrections to your immune system to figure out how to fight disease without fighting or hurting the things you need: that’s the medicinal Holy Grail of this age. Finding the right balance to know when to turn on, turn off, and create lasting, enduring responses is what its all about. And as old as the general theory is, the actual applications were not possible until this time and they’re only getting better and more refined. The big problem with applying immunotherapies in patients is not as much the identification of targets that cause cancers and other diseases as it is in sending a signal to cease action once the targets have been eradicated. This ends up causing what is called cytokine release syndrome (CRS), which is similar to graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD), in which healthy, functioning cells become the targets of immune cells that have run out of bad things to attack. The body’s immune system knows how to do that as well as remember an immune response should the same bad thing target the body. Science still has to figure that out.
A Cure Within looks simultaneously at the periphery and some of the specific challenges to the field of immunotherapy through the lens twenty-five uneven—which is not meant to be a critcism—biographical sketches of various pioneers in the filed of immunotherapy. Some of the profiles are matter-of-fact about science, others go into personal stories, all of them touch on what contributions each has made. Every chapter begins with a sketch on a scrap of paper, notebook or cocktail napkin of a schematic of the discovery, made by the subject of the essay. Some are kind of easy to understand, others require a PhD and years of training.
It is certainly worth a read if immunotherapy is important to you, your family members, and/or your friends. But you really have to long for it. My hope for this book is that it finds the audience it needs that would benefit from reading it. And there’s the rub. Which patients and caregivers would benefit from reading it? I think it’s a good book for the scientifically literate ones who actively engage in learning about diseases they are interested in and who want to know more about the fundamental concepts underlying them. To be honest, there aren’t that many of them. But for those few, this is an excellent resource to lead to more in-depth reading of specific topics. Which scientists would benefit? Probably young people who are considering or choosing to pursue careers in immunotherapy. I hope this book will find its audience. As the author points out, when Siddhartha Mukerjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies was published in 2010, it did not contain a word about immunotherapy. Given its importance in treating cancers and blood disorders, that fact alone gives this book relevance.
A Cure Within looks simultaneously at the periphery and some of the specific challenges to the field of immunotherapy through the lens twenty-five uneven—which is not meant to be a critcism—biographical sketches of various pioneers in the filed of immunotherapy. Some of the profiles are matter-of-fact about science, others go into personal stories, all of them touch on what contributions each has made. Every chapter begins with a sketch on a scrap of paper, notebook or cocktail napkin of a schematic of the discovery, made by the subject of the essay. Some are kind of easy to understand, others require a PhD and years of training.
It is certainly worth a read if immunotherapy is important to you, your family members, and/or your friends. But you really have to long for it. My hope for this book is that it finds the audience it needs that would benefit from reading it. And there’s the rub. Which patients and caregivers would benefit from reading it? I think it’s a good book for the scientifically literate ones who actively engage in learning about diseases they are interested in and who want to know more about the fundamental concepts underlying them. To be honest, there aren’t that many of them. But for those few, this is an excellent resource to lead to more in-depth reading of specific topics. Which scientists would benefit? Probably young people who are considering or choosing to pursue careers in immunotherapy. I hope this book will find its audience. As the author points out, when Siddhartha Mukerjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies was published in 2010, it did not contain a word about immunotherapy. Given its importance in treating cancers and blood disorders, that fact alone gives this book relevance.
January 21, 2019
One of my favorite reads of 2018. Immunotherapy is something I hope to expand upon in a future career in medical research. This novel follows the personal accounts of some of the leading minds in cancer care today.
January 8, 2025
A book with a lot of potential and a highly convincing premise. The way we were and are using chemotherapy reminds me of the surgical approach that preceded it, where surgeons would remove ever larger parts of the body to „cure cancer“. Immunotherapy is definitely the way forward and it sounds like such an exciting field to do research.
However, the book tells its story quite scattered and fragmented, with sudden jumps in topics that kept confusing me a lot. There is also no real red threat, it all seems very anecdotal. There are some stretches that are cohesive but they always end abruptly. That’s why I think the book is a good sketch, but needs more work to be turned into a great read.
However, the book tells its story quite scattered and fragmented, with sudden jumps in topics that kept confusing me a lot. There is also no real red threat, it all seems very anecdotal. There are some stretches that are cohesive but they always end abruptly. That’s why I think the book is a good sketch, but needs more work to be turned into a great read.
April 18, 2018
I was looking for a history of the field and its advances, instead it was a series of autobiographical interviews more appropriate for a magazine. Not impressive.
May 10, 2018
Fantastic collection of different strategies of cancer immunotherapy and the amazing scientists, doctors and researchers who worked relentlessly to make discoveries.
June 2, 2018
Well boy, feels weird giving the first non-5 star rating. I came in anticipating a lot from this book but left, quite literally, unsatisfied. Cancer is a topic extremely close to my heart as I've lost a family member and a close friend to it, but I guess I just wasn't the target audience of this book. I was anticipating more information about all the various advances in this field but however, I was greeted with short stories of every single character's life story, which I am not interested in, especially when I'm seeking to find out more about how cancer could be cured, and thus this book became incredibly dull. Also, the parts on the 'The Dark Night' was probably targetted to students studying medicine, which doesn't apply to me. Still, a laudable attempt and I did learn some things from the few chapters I read.
January 6, 2019
This book is so interesting and so smart. I definitely did not understand all of it, but his writing - and in particular, his definitions - made complicated science accessible. The power of the immune system is vast. The people who are working with it in the field of cancer and diverse. Reading their stories and accomplishments was a good way to start my 2019 year of reading
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews