William Coley

William Coley was a 19th century surgeon who pioneered the first systematic cancer immunotherapy by injecting bacterial preparations known as Coley's toxins into tumor patients and observing remarkable tumor regressions. His clinical observations that bacterial infections could cause cancer remissions led him to develop mixed bacterial vaccines used in hundreds of patients with sarcoma and other cancers. Although his work was largely abandoned after his death, it has been recognized as the first demonstration of innate immune activation as a cancer treatment principle. His work foreshadowed modern cytokine therapies and TLR agonist approaches to cancer immunotherapy.