title: Breaking tolerance in cancer immunotherapy: time to ACT.
abstract: The discovery of defined tumor antigens and their application in therapeutic cancer vaccines has not yet resulted in a successful therapy for cancer patients. Recent data suggest that this might be because most current clinical immunotherapeutic strategies rely on a tolerized tumor-reactive T-cell repertoire, resulting in a weak T-cell response that cannot induce tumor regression in the face of a multitude of normal and tumor-induced immunoregulatory mechanisms. New insights from animal models and clinical trials suggest a rationale for combination approaches in which the ineffective endogenous anti-tumor immune response is enhanced through a combination of adoptive cell transfer (ACT), specific vaccination and cytokine help for the reliable induction of a robust anti-tumor immune response and tumor regression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, Box 904, Houston, Texas 77030, USA. woverwijk@mdanderson.org
authors.forename: Willem W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Overwijk
mesh_terms: D019264:Adoptive Transfer; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology* / Q000628:therapy*; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology* / Q000637:transplantation