Experimental Cancer Treatment teaches body to fight Melanoma Cancer Cells

Many lives are cut short by Melanoma because advanced treatments don't always work.
Researchers here in Tampa are trying to change that with a new experimental therapy that they say is showing promising results. In cancer patients, the cancer cells trick the body. Their immune system sees the cells as normal, and allows them to multiply, out of control. Chemotherapy and radiation kill cancer cells, but in the process, they also kill fast-growing normal cells, too. In some cases chemo and radiation are curative. But for many patients, the cancer eventually comes back.
This new generation therapy works differently by teaching your own white blood cells to seek out and destroy cancer cells. It starts by removing some of the patient's tumor and white blood cells, called T cells, or TILs. (Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes.) In the lab, the two are combined. The cells are stimulated to help them recognizing the cancer as foreign. It's a process called activation.
The TILs are then allowed to multiply, a process that takes seven weeks on average.
"Our goal is to generate 50 billion," Dr. Sarnaik said. "We get a response in about half the patients, but for the home run that we're looking for, which is a complete clinical response meaning that all of the measurable tumor has gone, that happened about a fifth of the time," Sarnaik said.