Unleashing the immune system to conquer cancer

Harnessing the immune system to treat cancer.

A major challenge for the immune system is to recognize and eliminate cells undergoing carcinogenesis. Immune defense against tumors is complex. It can be mediated early by the innate immune system (i.e., phagocytes, NK cells, NKT cells, cytokines, and complement proteins) and later by the adaptive immune system (i.e., B cells and T cells). The eight articles in this Review series on tumor immu...

Is cancer dangerous to the immune system?

The hypothesis of immunologic surveillance of neoplasia is predicated on the theory that the immune system is capable of discriminating self from foreign antigens, and that tumor-specific antigens are regarded by the immune system as nonself. We propose here an alternate view, that the immune system has evolved to detect danger by employing 'professional' antigen-presenting cells as sentinels o...

Cancer immunotherapy: harnessing the immune system to battle cancer.

The recent clinical successes of immune checkpoint blockade and chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies represent a turning point in cancer immunotherapy. These successes also underscore the importance of understanding basic tumor immunology for successful clinical translation in treating patients with cancer. The Reviews in this Review Series focus on current developments in cancer immunoth...

Cancer and the Immune System

The immune system interacts with developing cancer in ways that can protect the host against hyperproliferation but that may also contribute to malignancy. Understanding the mechanisms behind the protective and harmful effects of the innate and adaptive immune systems in their exchanges with tumor cells will help to unravel how to harness our natural defenses with targeted therapeutics. This is...

Cancer and the Immune System