Patients’ cells turned into anti-cancer smart bombs

When Mark Origer’s melanoma returned after three years, he was devastated. By 2004, despite many treatments, the cancer had spread to his liver. “Right about that time my daughter got engaged,” he says “and I knew there was going to be a wedding coming up…I wanted to be there. ” He agreed to help test an experimental cancer vaccine at the National Institutes of Health. Not only did he make it to the wedding, today he’s one of two people in the study who are cancer free.