CD40 ligand immunotherapy in cancer: an efficient approach

Cancer cells do not elicit a clinically sufficient anti-tumor immune response that results in tumor rejection. Recently, many investigators have been trying to enhance anti-tumor immunity and encouraging results have been reported. This review will discuss current anti-cancer immunotherapy; interleukin-2 therapy, tumor vaccine secreting Granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor, dendritic cells fused with tumor cells, and CD40 ligand immunotherapy. Moreover, we introduce our two kinds of CD40 ligand immuno-genetherapy; (1) oral CD40 ligand gene therapy against lymphoma using attenuated Salmonella typhimurium (published in BLOOD 2000), (2) cancer vaccine transfected with CD40 ligand ex vivo for neuroblastoma (unpublished). Both approaches resulted in a high degree of protection against the tumor progression and they are simple and safe in the murine system.