Dr. William Coley (1862 – 1936) was a prominent American physician and a specialist in bone cancer. He was chief of the Bone Unit at Memorial Hospital, New York, from 1915 until his retirement in 1933. During his career, Coley treated over one thousand cancer patients with his fluid.

The first patient to receive Coley Fluid was a sixteen-year-old boy with a massive abdominal tumor. Every few days, Coley injected his fluid directly into the tumor mass and produced the symptoms of an infectious disease, but did not produce the disease itself. On each injection, there was a dramatic rise in body temperature and chills. The tumour gradually diminished in size. By May 1893, after four months of intensive treatment, the tumour was a fifth its original size. By August, the remains of the growth were barely perceptible. The boy received no further anticancer treatment and remained in good health until he died of a heart attack 26 years later.

Coley published his results and by the turn of the century 42 physicians from Europe and North America had reported cases of cancer that had been successfully treated with Coley Fluid. Coley Fluid became a mainstream cancer treatment and was successfully used in the treatment of most types of cancer.

After Dr. Coley’s death, his daughter Helen Coley Nauts dedicated the remaining fifty years of her long life in an attempt to revive her father’s discovery. She founded the Cancer Research Institute, researched the subsequent histories of patients who received Coley Fluid therapy and published numerous papers about cancer immune therapies including 18 comprehensive monographs of Coley Fluid case histories.

The historical results of Coley Fluid therapy are difficult to compare with modern results. Even so, every published study has reached the same conclusion: Coley Fluid therapy is as good, or better, than modern therapies. However, there were many different formulations of Coley Fluid that varied greatly in effectiveness, and there were many different treatment protocols that also varied greatly in effectiveness (for references to published studies and variations in effectiveness, go to Historical Results). MBVax Bioscience has developed an optimized version of Coley Fluid and an administration protocol based on a modern understanding of cancer immunology.