Immunotherapies

Immunotherapies are techniques that alter the relationship between a host’s immune system and the tumour, and therefore utilise the immune system to specifically recognise and destroy tumour cells [1]. As tumour antigens are selfantigens, overcoming the immune system’s innate selftolerance has been the primary challenge in immunotherapy. There are two major pathways to accomplish this: (1) activate the cell-mediated immune system through administration of cytokines or bacterial antigens that cause nonspecific activation of cytotoxic T cells, and (2) expose antigenpresenting cells to tumour antigens in the hope that this will overcome self-tolerance [2] ...