The pace of innovation creeps

Tucked in my mailbox the other day was an article on An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer. It looked at a radical new experimental use of genetically altered T-Cells to fight leukemia, done by doctors at the University of Pennsylvania’s cancer center.

There were only three patients, but the treatment worked for all three (one of them is in only partial remission). It was exciting to see this innovation, and sobering to note that the article reports Zeligh Eshhar’s initial work on genetically altering T-cells took place in the 1980s.

Real innovation creeps. Perhaps this radical cancer intervention will be a step towards iterative innovation, which can move much faster.