Coley's Toxins - Name

Name

There are several names for Coley's toxins or Coley's vaccine. The reason may lie in the difficulty of classifying such a substance under the view of the established medicine:

• Coley's vaccine is not a vaccine in the usual sense, namely that it prevents an infection. Rather than that, it triggers infection-like reactions. However, Coley's vaccine may work like many ordinary vaccines: it induces an immune response, in this case against the cancer. In this sense, it predates current attempts to develop cancer vaccines.
• The term toxin is applied as Coley's toxins contain both endotoxins and exotoxins.