Harnessing the immune system to improve cancer therapy.

ABSTRACT: Cancer immunotherapy uses the immune system and its components to mount an anti-tumor response. During the last decade, it has evolved from a promising therapy option to a robust clinical reality. Many immunotherapeutic modalities are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating cancer patients and many others are in the pipeline for approval as standalone or combinatorial therapeutic interventions, several also combined with standard treatments in clinical studies. The two main axes of cancer immunotherapeutics refer to passive and active treatments. Prominent examples of passive immunotherapy include administration of monoclonal antibodies and cytokines and adoptive cell transfer of ex vivo "educated" immune cells. Active immunotherapy refers, among others, to

SUBMITTER: Papaioannou NE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4971375 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature