Immunotherapy against antigenic tumors: a game with a lot of players |
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Authors: | A Pérez-Díez FM Marincola |
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Institution: | (1) Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, Building 10, Room 2B42, 10 Center Drive MSC, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 (USA), Fax: +1 301 402 0922, e-mail: marincola@nih.gov, US;(2) Department of Transfusion Medicine, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 (USA), US |
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Abstract: | Our understanding of how immune responses are generated and regulated drives the design of possible immunotherapies for cancer
patients. For that reason, we first describe briefly the actual immunological theories and their common perspectives about
cancer vaccine development. Second, we describe cancer vaccines that are able to induce tumor-specific immune responses in
cancer patients. However, these responses are not always followed by tumor rejection. At the end of the review, we discuss
two possible reasons that might explain this dichotomy of cancer immunology. First, the immune response generated, although
detectable, may not be quantitatively sufficient to reject the tumor. Second, the tumor microenvironment may modulate tumor
cell susceptibility to the systemic immune response induced by the immunization. Finally, we discuss what, in our opinion,
might be the best way to improve cancer vaccine strategies and how the relationship between the tumor and its surroundings
might be studied in more details.
Received 21 June 2001; received after revision 15 August 2001; accepted 15 August 2001 |
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Keywords: | , Antigenic tumors, cancer vaccines, immune response, tumor microenvironment, microarrays, |
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