Immune based therapies in cancer

Abstract

Immunotherapy of cancer has become a more promising approach in the past decade. Developments in both basic immunology and tumor biology have increased our knowledge of the interactions between the tumor cells and the immune system. The molecular identification of tumor-associated antigens and understanding of immunological pathways have cleared the way for development of different strategies for anti-tumor vaccines. The success of any cancer vaccine relies on the induction of an effective tumor-specific immune response to break tolerance and to elicit a long lasting anti-tumor immunity. It is also increasingly clear that the interactions of host-tumor are quite complicated leading to tumor escape mechanisms, which add another level of difficulty to this interaction. This review will summarize the recent developments in tumor immunotherapy as well as the clinical trials addressing novel immunotherapeutic approaches to cancer.