Royal Raymond Rife, an engineer by profession was the first person who had isolated the BX virus in 1932 that causes cancer. Two industrialists Timken, owner of the Timken Roller Bearing Company and Bridges, owner of the Bridges Carriage Company, provided funds to establish a laboratory for Rife's research. After the discovery of the cancer virus, Rife started his research to study, ‘how to destroy the virus?’ He studied the bacterial pleomorphism and found that patient’s own immune cells can be used to destroy the cancer virus. He also found that the immune cells are capable to destroy other degenerative diseases. In 1934, he opened a clinic where he had successfully cured sixteen cancer patients by electronically destroying the cancer virus in patients using their own immune cells. He took the help of some other researchers and doctors. Later, some other physicians also successfully treated many cancer patients by using the patient’s own immune cells. In time, Rife was able to prove that the cancer microorganisms are of following four forms.

• BX (carcinoma)
• BY (sarcoma-larger than BX)
• Monococcoid form in the monocytes of the blood of over 90 per cent of cancer patients. When properly stained, this form can be readily seen with a standard research microscope, and
• Crytomyces pleomorphia fungi-identical morphologically to that of the orchid and of the mushroom.

Prof. Iwasaki and Dr. Terunuma at Yamanashi University, Japan practice the immune cell therapies and helped several cancer patients to survive. In India also doctors at Dr Deenadayalan at Apollo Hospitals, Dr Sumana Premkumar at Kamakshi Memorial Hospital and Dr Ramadan at MCCF in Chennai practice immune cell therapies to combat cancer.

It is now known that the human body contains immune cells which can fight cancer and different types of viral infections. These immune cells often have short life spans and are not numerous enough to overcome attacks by particularly aggressive malignancies or invasions. In the current issue of the Cell Press (issue: January 4, 2013) researchers reported the use of stem cell technology to successfully regenerate patients' immune cells. Stem cells can be used to create large numbers immune cells that are long-lived and are capable to recognize the specific targets, i.e., cancer cells. These long-lived immune cells can also be used to destroy the HIV-infected cells. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania showed that a cancer patient's own immune cells can be genetically re-engineered to target and kill cancer cells.

Stem cells were first isolated 1998. Since then research on stem cells has received much public attention, both because of its extraordinary promise and because of relevant legal and ethical issues. A stem cell is a cell from the embryo, fetus, or adult that has, under certain conditions, the ability to reproduce itself for long periods or, in the case of adult stem cells, throughout the life of the organism. It also can give rise to specialized cells that make up the tissues and organs of the body. Much basic understanding about embryonic stem cells has come from animal research. In the laboratory, this type of stem cell can proliferate indefinitely, a property that is not shared by adult stem cells. An adult stem cell is an undifferentiated cell that is found in a differentiated or specialized tissue in the adult, such as blood. It can yield the specialized cell types of the tissue from which it originated. In the human body, it can renew itself too. Simply, stem cells are self-renewing, unspecialized cells that can give rise to multiple types all of specialized cells of the body. The process by which dividing, unspecialized cells are equipped to perform specific functions - muscle contraction or nerve cell communication, for example - is called differentiation, and is fundamental to the development of the mature organism. It is now known that stem cells, in various forms, can be obtained from the embryo, the fetus and the adult.

Plasticity is the ability of an adult stem cell from one tissue to generate the specialized cell types of another tissue. A recently reported example of plasticity is that, under specific experimental conditions, adult stem cells from bone marrow generated cells that resemble neurons and other cell types that are commonly found in the brain. The concept of adult stem cell plasticity is new, and the phenomenon is not thoroughly understood. Evidence suggests that, given the right environment, some adult stem cells are capable of being “genetically reprogrammed” to generate specialized cells that are characteristic of different tissues.

In the past decade, scientists discovered adult stem cells in tissues that were previously not thought to contain them, such as the brain. More recently, researchers reported that adult stem cells from one tissue appear to be capable of developing into cell types that are characteristic of other tissues. For example, although adult hematopoietic stem cells from bone marrow have long been recognized as capable of developing into blood and immune cells, recently scientists reported that, under certain conditions, the same stem cells could also develop into cells that have many of the characteristics of neurons. So, a new concept and a new term emerged adult stem cell plasticity.

Stem cells are being explored as a vehicle for delivering genes to specific tissues in the human body. At present, stem cell based therapies are a major area of investigation in cancer research. For many years, restoration of blood and immune system function has been used as a component in the care of cancer patients who have been treated with chemotherapeutic agents. Now, researchers are trying to devise more ways to use specialized cells derived from stem cells to target specific cancerous cells and directly deliver treatments that will destroy or modify them.

Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj, a renowned hematologist and oncologist at the South Florida Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Institute, uses stem-cell therapies to treat cancers. He has made it possible to transplant the immune cell from a donor who is not suffering to a cancer patient. He is taking white blood cells from healthy donors and fusing them into patients with cancer, so that the transfused cells can stimulate the patients’ immune systems and enable them to ward off the cancers on their own. Dr. Maharaj uses the immune system from the donors, and transfuses those cells into patients who have cancers, which is essentially a white-blood-cell transplant.

Most are very enthusiastic. "This is a huge accomplishment - huge," says Dr. Lee M. Nadler of Harvard Medical School, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times. Researchers have been struggling for decades to develop cancer treatments that use a patient's immune system to kill tumours with greater precision, leaving the rest of the body unharmed. "It is kind of a holy grail," says Dr. Gary Schiller of UCLA.

(The author is expert in chemicals and intermediates based in Mumbai)