The Breakthrough

The New York Times–bestselling author's "captivating and heartbreaking" chronicle of the quest to cure cancer by unleashing the immune system (The Wall Street Journal).

For decades, scientists have tried to understand how cancer evades our immune system. But now they have discovered the cunning tricks cancer uses to turn off our normal immune responses—tricks we are now learning to defeat. The result is what many are calling cancer's "penicillin moment," a revolutionary breakthrough in our quest to beat cancer.

In The Breakthrough, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Nurse Charles Graeber guides readers through the pioneering scientific research that brings immunotherapy to the forefront of 21st-century medical science. The race to harness this new information with more effective treatments is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, rapidly redefining our relationship with this all-too-human disease.
The Breakthrough is the story of the game-changing scientific discoveries that unleash our natural ability to recognize and defeat cancer, as told through the experiences of the patients, physicians, and cancer immunotherapy researchers who are on the front lines. This is the incredible true story of the race to find a cure, a dispatch from the life-changing world of modern oncological science, and a brave new chapter in medical history.