Coley’s toxins (sometimes called Coley’s vaccine, fever therapy or mixed bacterial vaccine) is an alternative cancer treatment that utilizes a culture of two types of killed bacteria to elicit an immune response.  This immunotherapy treatment is especially effective in certain bone and soft tissue sarcomas.

The idea for the use of these toxins in alternative cancer care came from research in Germany. The formula we use at Camelot Cancer Care was originally developed in 1893 by Dr. William Coley while he was a surgeon at New York’s Memorial Hospital.  He had published research about the relationship between an infection and a regression of cancer, which we now know to be due to the immune system’s crucial role in killing cancer.  The mix of the dead Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens bacteria prompts the immune system to fight the bacteria and it attacks the cancer cells as well.  The immune response causes a fever, and some researcher suggests that the rise in body temperature also has an effect on the continued development of cancer cells.

Coley’s toxins are delivered intravenously – at Camelot Cancer Care, patients receive their treatment painlessly through a picc line or their port if they arrive with one installed. When receiving Coley’s toxins, patients may experience temporary nausea and chills as their fever spikes, but their symptoms usually return to normal within a few hours of the treatment.  This immunotherapy is excellent for combining with other treatments for a more complete alternative cancer treatment program.

According to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a small group of patients with advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (or CLL) responded extremely well to an unconventional treatment and are all in remission one year later.  The patients were given a genetically-modified version of their immune system’s own T cells, which destroy tumors by identifying specific proteins on another cell that mark it as cancerous.

In the study, researchers removed samples of each patient’s own natural T cells and gave the cells an artificial receptor for a protein called CD19, which is found on cancerous cells in leukemia patients.  The genetically modified T cells attacked more cancer cells than they would have had they not been modified.

The patients in the study had tried other, more mainstream treatments for cancer with less success, and the results they achieved with genetic T cell therapy are demonstrating that alternative cancer therapies are often an excellent choice for patients.  Mainstream medicine is beginning to recognize alternative cancer care as a viable and successful option more than ever before.

Several of Camelot Cancer Care’s treatments also focus on improving immune function with safe and FDA-approved therapies.  Ultraviolet blood irradiation, or UVBI, is an alternative treatment option that – like genetic T cell therapy – boosts the immune system to kill cancer cells.  Not to be confused with radiation therapy, UVBI involves passing the blood through crystal tubing and exposing it to a frequency of UV light that kills bacterial and viral cells.  These dead cells serve as antigens, which trigger the immune system and help it to recognize and kill cancerous cells.  This FDA-approved treatment has few side effects and is an excellent way to safeguard a patient’s body against recurrence.

Coley’s toxins, also called mixed bacterial vaccine or fever therapy, is another treatment which triggers an immune response that recognizes tumor cells as invaders and kills them.   The therapy introduces a mixture of bacterial cultures that activate the immune system, and it has been shown to be effective in many soft tissue sarcomas and osteosarcomas.

Mainstream medicine is beginning to accept and endorse other forms of cancer treatment.  This exciting new research is bringing patients’ and doctors’ attention to alternative cancer solutions and paving the way for other therapies to take a more prominent role in the treatment of cancer.