Adoptive cellular immunotherapy of cancer: an overview.

A variety of distinct strategies to boost the immune system function of the cancer patient in an attempt to treat malignancy have been developed over the past several decades. A functional classification of current biotherapy focuses on the ex vivo activation of cancer patient’s leukocytes with biological response modifiers in an attempt to expand their numbers or to increase their antitumor capabilities, or both; this approach has been termed adoptive cellular immunotherapy (ACI). Within the past two decades, we have gleaned many insights into the overall operation of the human immune system and the potential applicability of this system to the treatment of cancer. The natural killer lymphocyte is the third well-characterized lymphocyte subset that has antitumor cell reactivity. If in vivo preclinical modeling appears promising, the proposed ACI therapy is then further refined to comply with Food and Drug Administration guidelines for the use of activated leukocytes in human cancer biotherapy trials.