Immune cycle

The immune cycle is a natural homeostatic oscillation of the immune system when chronic inflammation is occurring. The process used to identify this cycle is called 'immune cycle mapping', while the process that uses this cycle in treatment is called 'immune synchronisation'. It is important to note that the immune cycle and immune synchronisation still "require a lot more testing" before treatment methods can become viable because the "research is still in its early stages".
History
In the late 1990s, Associate Professor Brendon Coventry noticed that some of his patients responded better to a Melanoma vaccine than other patients despite receiving identical treatment. When local cancer tumours where injected with the vaccine, cancers that had not been injected began to shrink as well, thus indicating an immunogenic relationship. Operating on this theory, Coventry was able to increase complete response rates to treatment of advanced melanoma from 7% to 17% and without noticeable negative side effects to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
In 2005, Mr. Martin Ashdown, a minor contributor to this 2004 paper, claimed to have discovered this cycle in 2002, although this is inconsistent with the historical record.
Speaking on ABC radio in 2010, Coventry explained the reasoning behind how the cycle was discovered by numerous practitioners and researchers:
Current scientific status
In 2010, Professor Michael Quinn from the Royal Melbourne Hospital announced that trials would be conducted on women suffering from ovarian cancer. Dr Roxana S. Dronca et al. from the Mayo Clinic found that the immune cycle is also evident in fluctuations beyond C-reactive protein, as it can be seen in "infradian immune biorhythms of both immune cell subpopulations and cytokines." Speaking to the Daily Express newspaper in the UK, Quinn said
However, in 2014, Dr Mutsa Madondo et al. (in a team that included Professor Quinn) were unable to replicate the results of the 2009 Coventry et al. paper. They discovered that "he statistical analysis used showed no evidence of periodic oscillation".
In late 2016, one of the patent holders, Biotempus Limited - whose Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Martin Ashdown, was involved in the 2009 paper - went into administration and liquidation. The other patent holder, the Mayo Clinic in the US, is presently conducting a clinical trial into immune synchronisation.
Immune synchronised cancer treatments
The use of the immune cycle in treatment through immune synchronisation remains in the very early stages of research, as demonstrated above. According to Coventry, "he immune system works in waves that seems to be switching on and off constantly. And now what we're trying to do is see whether we can identify periods or phases in that cycle where we could target more effectively..."
In 2013, Dr Svetomir Markovic of the Mayo Clinic gave a public lecture in which he described the immune cycle and the potential developments to medicine it provides.

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