I studied sialic acid on the cell membrane and its influence on immune reactions (Rosenberg and Einstein 1972), but the 2 years I spent at the NCI was too short a time to make substantial progress. The Immunology Branch was led by John Fahey and then by William Terry who gave me the freedom to pursue my interests in trying to identify cancer antigens on the membranes of cancer cells.

After 1 year there (1970) with the war in Vietnam raging, I joined the Public Health Service and became an Immunology Fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. I returned to the Brigham residency but stayed for only 1 year and then took another leave of absence to do research in the laboratory of Harvard Immunologist, John David. I did not want to be intimidated by what I did not know. I wanted a deep background in science so that I could draw upon disparate areas of scientific knowledge and develop confidence that with effort and a good book I could understand any aspect of science. My first 2 years were in classes in physics, advanced mathematics, physical chemistry, and genetics followed by 2 years in laboratory research studying the protein structure of human cell membranes (Rosenberg and Guidotti 1968, 1969). I realized that innovative research required a deeper background in basic science and after 1 year as a surgical intern, I received permission to leave the residency and spent 4 years completing a Ph.D. I knew that I wanted to care for patients but also do research aimed at developing new treatments. My interest in medicine and science led me to the Bronx High School of Science and to Johns Hopkins for college and medical school and to a surgical residency in Boston in 1963. My brother became a surgeon and over many discussions flamed my interest in laboratory research. I was thrilled by books such as Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif, The Brothers Mayo by Helen Clapesattle, Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, and The Cry and the Covenant by Morton Thompson.

They inundated me with books on every subject, and I remember being especially thrilled by one that taught me that cells could be kept alive outside the body. Neither my father nor mother had much time for education and my older brother and sister guided my education. Cancer randomly attacks people of all ages and forces its victims and their families to watch impotently as it grows and spreads. I believe that this family history ultimately influenced my choosing to work on cancer. As a child, I wanted to stop their suffering, stop everyoneвЂ™s suffering. My parents had experienced evils that I could hardly understand. I remember the months after World War II when my parents tried to reach relatives who had stayed in Poland, only to slowly learn about so many that had died in the death camps. They married in 1927 and I was born in 1940 when we were living in an apartment in the Bronx. Their families lost everything in the pogroms against the Jews before World War I, and they spent the war hiding in cellars, living off the kindness of strangers until they separately came to America in the early 1920s. My mother and father were born in small towns in Poland. Stories I heard from my parents were likely at the root of this decision. My career path changed when I was about 6В years old from wanting to be a cowboy to an intense, almost spiritual desire, to become a physician. It seemed likely to me that the patientвЂ™s immune system had recognized his cancer as foreign and destroyed it. Only a few cases had ever been reported of a stomach cancer that underwent this kind of regression, and I eventually published this case (Rosenberg et al. Somehow this cancer had undergone complete regression in the absence of any treatment, one of the rarest events in medicine. Now, 12В years later, I operated to remove his gall bladder and there was no remaining trace of the cancer. Five months later, he returned to the hospital, had gained weight and had returned to work. The patient was seen again shortly after discharge from the hospital and was recovering normally.

Biopsies sent to the pathologist confirmed the diagnosis of cancer. The operative note revealed that at least three tumors had spread to his liver as well as multiple lymph nodes and these could not be removed. Hospital had resected two-thirds of the patientвЂ™s stomach that contained a large invasive gastric cancer. Twelve years earlier, surgeons at the V.A.

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