William Coley - Biography

Biography

He was born on January 12, 1862 in Westfield, Connecticut to Horace Bradley Coley and Clarina B. Wakeman.

He began his career as a bone surgeon at New York Cancer Hospital (which later became part of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center); however, he became more interested in cancer treatment when one of his early patients died from bone cancer. While going through hospital records, Coley found a sarcoma case study of one patient named Fred Stein, whose tumor disappeared following a high fever from erysipelas infection, now known as Streptococcus pyogenes. This sparked Coley’s interest and drove him to find what few examples of similar cancer treatment had been previously recorded. He discovered that other medical pioneers including Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur, and Emil von Behring, had recorded observations of erysipelas infection coinciding with cancer regression.

Coley’s first intentional erysipelas infection was performed on a patient named Mr. Zola on May 3, 1891, who had tonsil and throat cancer. Mr. Zola came down with erysipelas and his condition improved tremendously. Mr. Zola lived for another eight and a half years.

Coley was convinced that he could effectively use bacteria to treat cancer and created a mixture of killed bacterial infusions since known as Coley's Toxins or Coley's vaccine. The infusion was administered by injection in increasing doses to induce a fever. Once stimulated, he observed, the immune system could be capable of tackling cancerous cells along with the infection. The cancerous cells would then slough off.