BETHESDA, Maryland — Instead of using surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation, researchers from the National Institutes of Health are finding so-far limited but inspiring success in a new approach for fighting cancer, using the immune system to attack the tumors the way it would a cold or flu. The human immune system doesn’t usually fight cancer on its own, so Dr. Steven Rosenberg and his NIH colleagues are trying to genetically engineer it, using a virus they created in the lab that seeks out cancer tumors and attaches to them. Rosenberg’s idea: Mix the cells that seek out the cancer with the immune cells that destroy things and see whether it would create a sort of smart bomb for the cancer. (Rosenberg: ‘Just a start’) In the study, Rosenberg tested the approach in 17 patients with advanced melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer. All the conventional treatments for the disease already had failed in all of the patients. In 15 of the patients Rosenberg’s engineered immune-cell treatment didn’t work, but in two of the patients the cancer seems to have completely disappeared. The findings are published in this week’s issue of the journal Science. (Watch […]