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How to help your body help itself

In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, Anticancer: A New Way of Life, French psychiatrist and neuroscientist David Servan-Schreiber describes how he survived cancer with medical treatment and by boosting his immune system’s natural defenses through diet, exercise and a positive outlook on life.

David Servan-Schreiber | November 2008 issue

However, the mechanisms underlying this mysterious reabsorption still needed to be explained. It was Zheng’s colleague Mark Miller, a specialist in the development of cancer cells, who penetrated the mystery. In examining samples of S180 cells taken from the abdomens of the miraculous mice, Miller discovered a real battlefield. Instead of the usual cancer cells—rounded, hairy and aggressive—he saw cells that were smooth, dented, full of holes. These cells were locked in combat with white blood cells of the immune system, including the famous “natural killer,” or “NK,” cells. Miller was even able to film the white blood cells’ attack on the S180 cells by video microscopy. He’d found the explanation for the enigma: The resistant mice were able to mount a powerful defense, thanks to their immune systems, even after cancer had taken hold.

Natural killer cells are special agents of the immune system. Like all white blood cells, they patrol the organism continually in search of bacteria, viruses or new cancer cells. But while the other cells need previous exposure to disease agents to recognize and combat them, NK cells don’t need prior introduction to an antigen to mobilize. As soon as they detect an enemy, they gather around the intruder, seeking membrane-to-membrane contact. Once they make contact, NK cells aim their internal equipment at their targets, like tank turrets. This equipment carries vesicles—sacs—filled with poisons.

On contact with the cancer cell’s surface, the vesicles are released and the chemical weapons of the NK cells—perforin and granzymes—penetrate the membrane. The molecules of perforin take the shape of tiny rings. They’re assembled in the shape of a tube, forming a passage for the granzymes through the cancer cell’s membrane. At the core of the cancer cell, the granzymes then activate the mechanisms of programmed self-destruction. It’s as though they give the cancer cell an order to commit suicide, one it has no choice but to obey. In response to this message, the cell’s nucleus crumbles, leading to its collapse. The deflated remains of the cell are then ready to be digested by macrophages, the garbage collectors of the immune system, which are found in the wake of NK cells.

Like the immune cells of Zheng’s resistant mice, human NK cells can kill different types of cancer cells, in particular sarcoma cells and those of breast, prostate, lung and colon cancer. An investigation of 77 women with breast cancer studied over a 12-year period suggested how important these cells may be for recovery.

First, samples of each woman’s tumor taken at the time of diagnosis were cultivated with her own NK cells. Certain patients’ NK cells didn’t react, as though their natural vitality had been mysteriously sapped. The NKs of other patients, in contrast, went about a serious cleanup, indicating an active immune system. Twelve years later, at the end of the study, almost half (47 percent) of the patients whose NKs hadn’t reacted in the laboratory had died. On the other hand, 95 percent of those whose immune systems had been active under the microscope were still alive.

Other studies delivered similar conclusions: The less active the NK and other white blood cells were under the microscope, the more rapid the cancer’s progress, the more it spread throughout the body in the form of metastases, and the lower the chances of survival 11 years later. Lively immune cells thus seem essential to countering the growth and spread of cancer.

In a cruel way, Mary-Ann, a Scottish woman who wasn’t suffering from cancer, learned how crucial the immune system is in preventing tumors from taking hold. She suffered from renal failure, a serious disease of the kidneys that makes them incapable of filtering blood. This leads to the accumulation of toxins in the body. To avoid the dialysis she had to undergo at the hospital several times a week, she had a kidney transplant.

For a year and a half, Mary-Ann was able to live almost normally. The only constraint was a daily intake of immune-suppressing drugs. Their purpose, as their name suggests, was to weaken her immune system to prevent it from rejecting the transplant that was keeping her alive.

At that point, though, a gnawing pain developed at the site of the transplanted kidney and an abnormal nodule was identified on her left breast during a routine mammogram. A biopsy revealed the appearance of a double metastasis of melanoma—a serious skin cancer. However, they found no primary melanoma that might have been the source of these metastases.

Called in by the surgeons, dermatologist Rona MacKie was no better able to explain this mysterious case of phantom melanoma. Everything was done to save Mary-Ann. The immunosuppressants were stopped. But it was too late. Six months later, she died of the general invasion of a melanoma, the original site of which could never be found.

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