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Nature Immunology 9, 1205–1206 (1 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/ni1108-1205

Cancer exploiting complement: a clue or an exception?

Bruce E Loveland & Jonathan Cebon

Treatments aimed at boosting the immune response to cancer date back to the late nineteenth century, when New York surgeon William Coley recognized that tumor regression could follow certain suppurative infections. He developed a crude therapy based on a patient's own bacterial flora, which met with some sporadic success.