Active specific immunotherapy

A method of cancer therapy for treating a human patient with a resectable, solid carcinoma tumor to inhibit recurrence or formation of metastases, comprising surgically removing solid tumor tissue from a human cancer patient and preparing a viable autologous tumor cell vaccine by treating the tumor tissue to obtain viable tumor cells by the method of digesting tumor tissue with collagenase to free tumor cells, whereby said cells remain viable and intact, irradiating the tumor cells to be viable but non-tumorigenic, preparing a vaccine comprising about 10.sup.7 viable but non-tumorigenic tumor cells per dose and injecting at least three doses of the vaccine intradermally into the human patient from whom the tumor tissue had been removed after the patient's immune system has recovered from surgery, wherein at least the first two of the at least three doses comprise about 10.sup.7 BCG cells as adjuvant and the last dose is free of adjuvant, and wherein at the time of injection cell viability is at least 70% when measured by trypan blue exclusion testing.