Breaking tolerance in cancer immunotherapy: time to ACT

Willem W Overwijk
2005 Current Opinion in Immunology  
The discovery of defined tumor antigens and their application in therapeutic cancer vaccines has not yet resulted in a successful therapy for cancer patients. Recent data suggest that this might be because most current clinical immunotherapeutic strategies rely on a tolerized tumorreactive T-cell repertoire, resulting in a weak T-cell response that cannot induce tumor regression in the face of a multitude of normal and tumor-induced immunoregulatory mechanisms. New insights from animal models
more » ... d clinical trials suggest a rationale for combination approaches in which the ineffective endogenous anti-tumor immune response is enhanced through a combination of adoptive cell transfer (ACT), specific vaccination and cytokine help for the reliable induction of a robust anti-tumor immune response and tumor regression.
doi:10.1016/j.coi.2005.01.011 pmid:15766680 fatcat:7kkfkil74vathas3swdamsgzdy