Back in the early 1980s, Linda Taylor, just 33 years old, was diagnosed with advanced skin cancer and faced a grim prognosis. Luckily, she met Dr. Stephen Rosenberg from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who treated her with an experimental approach harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight the disease. In 1984, Taylor became the first patient ever to be cured through immunotherapy—a groundbreaking case that forever changed the landscape of cancer treatment.

That pioneering therapy relied on interleukin-2 (IL-2), a signaling molecule that activates many types of immune cells to attack tumors. IL-2 later became the first immunotherapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, while effective, IL-2 therapy often causes severe side effects and can also stimulate regulatory T cells, which dampen the immune response instead of boosting it.