Progress Against Cancer

Doctors are becoming increasingly certain that immunology--the study of the body's natural defenses against illness--will eventually provide the key to understanding and controlling cancer. Last week that conviction was strengthened when some 2,000 of the world's foremost medical scientists met in Manhattan under the joint sponsorship of the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute to report their progress in human cancer research. Among the most recent findings:

> There is new evidence that the main cancer villains are viruses, submicroscopic packets of nucleic acids that can invade cells and take over their genetic machinery. Using immunological techniques to identify antigens (the substances that trigger the body's defenses), Dr. Donald Morton of the University of California at Los Angeles has found signs of viral activity in human sarcomas, or cancers of connective tissue. Drs. Werner and Gertrude Henle of the University of Pennsylvania have studied an intruder known as the Epstein-Barr virus in cells from victims of Burkitt's lymphoma, a tumor of the lymph glands. They have also studied the virus in cells of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a malignancy of the nose and throat. Joseph Melnick of Baylor College of Medicine has determined that antibodies formed by the body to combat the herpes Type 2 virus* which often causes sores in the genital area, are found more frequently in women with cervical cancer than in those who are free of the disease. Previous research has already revealed that women who have had genital herpes are eight times as likely to develop cervical cancer as those who have not.

> Ever since virus-like particles were first observed in the milk of women with family histories of breast cancer, many women with similar family histories have worried about whether they can breast-feed their infants without transmitting the disease. Their concern is apparently unwarranted. Laboratory studies have so far failed to disclose the presence of antigens or antibodies that would prove that the particles were indeed viruses. Nor has research established that the particles cause malignancies. Dr. Brian Henderson of the University of Southern California reported at the Manhattan meeting that he had studied 317 women with breast cancer and a carefully matched control group. He found that the number of women who had themselves been breast-fed was about the same in each group.

> Doctors have been experimenting with immunotherapy--stimulating the immune system to recognize and combat cancer--for several years. Dr. Carl M. Pinsky of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York injected BCG, a live-bacteria anti-tuberculosis vaccine, directly into the lesions of 39 patients with malignant melanoma, a rare form of fast-spreading cancer that starts on the skin. In eight of the patients, there was noticeable regression of at least some of the treated lesions; twelve others had regression in all of the sores injected with the vaccine. Two others fared even better. They have experienced complete regression of all lesions and have been completely cancer-free, one for a full year, the other for two.

* A variant of the virus that causes cold sores

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