Current developments in cancer vaccines and cellular immunotherapy reviewed.

2003 SEP 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Investigators have published a review on the current developments in cancer vaccines and cellular immunotherapy.

"This article reviews the immunologic basis of clinical trials that test means of tumor antigen recognition and immune activation, with the goal to provide the clinician with a mechanistic understanding of ongoing cancer vaccine and cellular immunotherapy clinical trials. Multiple novel immunotherapy strategies have reached the stage of testing in clinical trials that were accelerated by recent advances in the characterization of tumor antigens and by a more precise knowledge of the regulation of cell-mediated immune responses," scientists writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology report.

"The key steps in the generation of an immune response to cancer cells include loading of tumor antigens onto antigen-presenting cells in vitro or in vivo, presenting antigen in the appropriate immune stimulatory environment, activating cytotoxic lymphocytes, and blocking autoregulatory control mechanisms," said Antoni Ribas and colleagues at the University of California-Los Angeles. "This knowledge has opened the door to antigen-specific immunization for cancer using tumor-derived proteins or RNA, or synthetically generated peptide epitopes, RNA, or DNA."

"The critical step of antigen presentation has been ...