Coley's Toxins - History

History

Observations of a relationship between infection and cancer regression date back to at least the 18th century. More specifically, observations of an apparent relationship between erysipelas and remission of cancer predate Coley. For example, Anton Chekhov, in his capacity as a physician, recorded such a relationship in 1884.

Coley started his investigations after the death of one of his first patients, Elizabeth Dashiell, from sarcoma. Dashiell was a close childhood friend of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who later indicated that her death was what first motivated his subsequent funding of cancer research.

Frustrated by this case, Coley's subsequent research led him to find evidence of the apparent relationship between infection and cancer regression, which he published in 1891. His initial attempts at deliberate infection were mixed, but in 1893 he began combining Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens, based upon research from G.H. Roger indicating that this combination led to greater virulence.

The so-called Coley's Toxins were used against different types of cancer from the year 1893 through the year 1963. From 1923 on, Parke-Davis was the only source of Coley's Toxins in the United States. In the wake of the thalidomide controversy and the Kefauver Harris Amendment of 1962, Coley's Toxins were assigned "new drug" status by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), making it illegal to prescribe them outside of clinical trials. Since then, several small clinical trials have been conducted with mixed results.

Coley's Toxins were also produced by the small German pharmaceutical company Südmedica and sold under the trade name Vaccineurin. However, production ceased by 1990 because of a lack of re-approval by German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices.