Abstract

Cancer immunotherapy aims to eliminate cancerous tissues by using the immune system’s capabilities. After decades of study, a variety of cancer immunotherapies have demonstrated unambiguous clinical efficacy. These include graft-versus-leukemia, which eliminates leukaemia after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which prolong survival for people with B-cell lymphomas and breast cancer that expresses the HER2 gene, and a therapeutic cancer vaccine for hormone-refractory prostate cancer. Bispecific mAbs have mediated impressive responses in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia7 (ALL), and dramatic antitumor effects have been observed using adoptive T-cell immunotherapy, which is increasingly using genetic engineering to create tumour antigen-specific T cells. Recently, mAbs that block key checkpoints on T cells have improved survival in metastatic melanoma and induced antitumor effects in other cancers.