The approach, adoptive immunotherapy, uses the patient's own white blood cells as the primary assault against cancer.

That has led to research in adoptive immunotherapy, or the science of giving patients the T-cells their bodies cannot produce.

Rosenberg has pioneered the use of adoptive immunotherapy.

Three phase I clinical trials, led by experts in adoptive immunotherapy of cancer, have so far yielded excellent results.

That event made him aware of the possibility and necessity of developing active and adoptive immunotherapy and applying it to the treatment of cancers.

Adoptive immunotherapy with interleukin-2 and anti-CD3 activated autologous lymphocytes was found to have lengthened recurrence-free survival, but not overall survival, in one study.

The treatment, known as adoptive immunotherapy, was developed primarily by Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, and his colleagues.

Donor lymphocyte (or leukocyte) infusion (DLI) or buffy coat fusion is a form of adoptive immunotherapy used after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Takayama T, Sekine T, Makuuchi M, et al.: Adoptive immunotherapy to lower postsurgical recurrence rates of hepatocellular carcinoma: a randomised trial.

Mehta J, Powles R, Treleaven J, et al.: Outcome of acute leukemia relapsing after bone marrow transplantation: utility of second transplants and adoptive immunotherapy.

Adoptive immunotherapy with either donor lymphocytes or ex vivo -generated Epstein-Barr virus-specific cytotoxic T-cells have been effective in treating PTLD following blood or bone marrow transplant.

Rosenberg's name was already a household word because of his widely publicized success with "adoptive immunotherapy," a cancer treatment that involves culturing huge quantities of a patient's own natural cancer-fighting cells - tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, or TIL cells.

Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues have explored ways to make adoptive immunotherapy more powerful by extracting from patients certain white blood cells, known as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, that seem to have a propensity to attack cancerous cells, stimulating them in the laboratory with interleukin-2 and then returning them to patients.

The adoptive immunotherapy treatment involves removing some of a patient's white blood cells and growing them in the laboratory with an immune system protein, interleukin-2, or IL-2, that promotes cell growth and, presumably, can convert ordinary white blood cells into attack cells that can home in on and destroy cancer cells.