title: How Cancers Escape Immune Destruction and Mechanisms of Action for the New Significantly Active Immune Therapies: Helping Nonimmunologists Decipher Recent Advances.
abstract: With the Food and Drug Administration and other worldwide regulatory authorities' approval of ipilimumab (Yervoy), sipuleucel-T (Provenge), nivolumab (Opdivo), and pembrolizumab (Keytruda), oncologic therapy has now moved into noncancer cell targets within the immune system. For many nonimmunologists, understanding how these vastly different therapies work to improve survival, like no other therapies have in the past, is a challenge. The present report reviews the normal function of the immune system, how cancers escape the normal immune system, and how these new therapies improve immune system reactions against cancers.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Oncologists have tremendous experience with therapies that target the cancer cells. New biologic agents have been rapidly introduced recently that target not cancer cells, but the patient's immune cells. The mechanisms of action of these immune-based biologic agents are within the host immune system. To understand these new biologic therapies, basic knowledge of normal and abnormal immune function is essential. The present report explains the up-to-date basic immune normal and abnormal function and prepares the oncologist to understand how the new drugs work, why they work, and why there are associated adverse events.
authors.affiliation: Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Messerschmidt
authors.affiliation: Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: George C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Prendergast
authors.affiliation: Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA Clinical Research Center, Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA messerschmidt@limr.org.
authors.forename: Gerald L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Messerschmidt
mesh_terms: D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000276:immunology / Q000627:therapeutic use; D006801:Humans; D007107:Immune System; D007167:Immunotherapy; D000074324:Ipilimumab; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology* / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D000077594:Nivolumab; D014020:Tissue Extracts / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000276:immunology / Q000627:therapeutic use
chemical_list: D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal; D000074324:Ipilimumab; D014020:Tissue Extracts; D000077594:Nivolumab; C511774:sipuleucel-T
keywords: B-cell function; Basic immunology; Dendritic cell function; Immunotherapy actions; Reversal of cancer-associated immune suppression; T-cell function
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