Charles Graeber

Nonfiction 2018| 302 pages

No one on my blog list will likely read this book. For probably the first time in Dusty Shelves, I am including the title and subtitle: The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer.  While this book was recommended to me, I was disappointed to learn it was published in 2018 which means it was written about 2016, and so is nine years out of date.

Nevertheless, I learned a great deal about the history of immunotherapy.  How physicians first tried to infect other viruses, diseases, and bacteria into non-responsive cancer patients in the late 1880s to entice the body to supercharge its immune system and fight the non-self cells of cancer.  Though wildly unsuccessful, the germ of a good idea was inoculated (so to speak!)

I learned about T cells, B cells, and the all-important anti-CTLA-4 ipilimumab. Performance status, checkpoint inhibitors, pigs, mice, and TNF (tumor necrosis factor) were all concepts I learned.  The role of T cell research and application with AIDS patients is imperative.. All of these are important to and informative of today's medical oncology use of immunotherapy.

I rated this two hearts because it is likely a very obscure topic for most of you.  However, it is written with the lay person as its audience, making it readable and typically easy to understand.

June 2025