The immunologists, honored with the 2018 award in Physiology or Medicine, pioneered immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s immune system to fight cancer.

Drugs approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis block cytokines, the molecules responsible for severe side effects from the immunotherapy, and reduce symptoms in mice.

The immunotherapy eliminated a woman’s metastatic lesions and kept her disease-free for two years.

Sequencing of a single gene can spot patients with a dangerous form of mycosis fungoides better than other prognostic tests.  

A preliminary clinical trial finds that the personalized therapy improves survival rates and has no severe side-effects.

Mice treated with an immunostimulant had better outcomes when researchers blocked the expression of TNFR2, a compound that helps tumors evade immune attack.

T-cell therapies are not just for cancer. Researchers are also advancing immunotherapy methods to protect bone marrow transplant patients from viral infections. 

A team has engineered two stem cell lines into “synthetic T cells” that destroy breast cancer cells in vitro. 

The therapy, produced by Kite Pharma and owned by Gilead Sciences, is approved for use against some types of large B-cell lymphomas.