The dangers of a sensational title (Score 2, Interesting)

A better title would probably be, "Scientists test to make sure that interesting cancer treatment idea doesn't kill human subjects." This appears to be a Stage I clinical trial of an interesting idea, that is at least somewhat biologically plausible. I haven't fully reviewed the pulished data, so I don't feel comfortable saying more than that. However, most of us who work in biology and medicine would agree that our understanding of the immune system is still relatively primitive, so there may be potential cures still lurking in plain site. However, Stage I trials are only the very initial trials in humans - and they evaluate safety as the primary outcome; i.e, trying to make sure we're not going to kill anyone. Stage II trials would attempt to evaluate appropriate dosing, and Stage III trials attempt to compare the new therapy to currently accepted standards. While this may be a breakthrough (and all of us in medicine are always looking for breakthroughs), there are also huge lists of ideas that worked really well in mice, moved on to Stage I, II, and III clinical trials, and failed utterly. This is extremely far from being any sort of cancer cure at this point - though perhaps 20 years from now we'll look back at this as a step towards that goal. I think it's always interesting to hear