Yale spin­out re-en­gi­neers an im­munother­a­py GSK, oth­ers once aban­doned

Be­gin­ning in 2004, Glax­o­SmithK­line ran 5 dif­fer­ent tri­als to see if giv­ing pa­tients a mol­e­cule called IL-18 could treat their can­cers. An ear­ly form of im­munother­a­py, it was sup­posed to boost the body’s nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to fight tu­mors.

It didn’t. The largest of the stud­ies was ter­mi­nat­ed ear­ly; the tu­mors pro­gressed af­ter around 7 months no mat­ter how much IL-18 you gave them. The field even­tu­al­ly moved on both from IL-18 and, to a de­gree, from the class of im­mune mod­u­la­tors, called cy­tokines, in gen­er­al.

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