Revisiting immunosurveillance and immunostimulation: Implications for cancer immunotherapy
- PDF / 446,059 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 610 x 792 pts Page_size
- 4 Downloads / 140 Views
BioMed Central
Open Access
Review
Revisiting immunosurveillance and immunostimulation: Implications for cancer immunotherapy Christine V Ichim*1,2,3 Address: 1Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M4N 3M5 Canada and 3MedVax Pharma Corp, 126 Madison Avenue South, Kitchener, ON N2G 3M6, Canada Email: Christine V Ichim* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 08 February 2005 Journal of Translational Medicine 2005, 3:8
doi:10.1186/1479-5876-3-8
Received: 19 November 2004 Accepted: 08 February 2005
This article is available from: http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/3/1/8 © 2005 Ichim; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Experimental and clinical experience demonstrates that the resolution of a pathogenic challenge depends not only on the presence or absence of an immune reaction, but also on the initiation of the proper type of immune reaction. The initiation of a non-protective type of immune reaction will not only result in a lack of protection, but may also exacerbate the underlying condition. For example, in cancer, constituents of the immune system have been shown to augment tumor proliferation, angiogenesis, and metastases. This review discusses the duality of the role of the immune system in cancer, from the theories of immunosurveillance and immunostimulation to current studies, which illustrate that the immune system has both a protective role and a tumorpromoting role in neoplasia. The potential of using chemotherapy to inhibit a tumor-promoting immune reaction is also discussed.
If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago The notion that the immune system may be manipulated into recognizing and eradicating neoplasia is not new. Heroic efforts to develop a cancer vaccine can be traced as far back as 1777 when the surgeon to the Duke of Kent injected himself with malignant tissue as a prophylaxis against development of cancer. In 1808, another attempt was made to develop a cancer vaccine by the doctor to Louis XVII who inoculated himself with breast cancer in hope of reversing a soft-tissue sarcoma, although no therapeutic effect was observed. However, it was not until
1891 that the first report of successful immunotherapy was published by William Coley, a clinician at the Memorial Slo
Data Loading...
