Combinatorial immunotherapies for infectious diseases

Hartmut Hengel1, K Noel Masihi

  • 1Robert Koch Institute, Nordufer 20, D-13353 Berlin, Germany.

Combating pathogenic organisms by combinatorial approaches involving appropriate immune response molecules and antimicrobial drugs represents a progessively more apparent and successful therapeutic paradigm for the treatment of acute and chronic persistent infectious diseases. This review explores areas of current innovation and provides an update of the present state of knowledge concerning combination of chemotherapy with several immune-based interventions in infections. In the future, a better understanding of microbial immune modulation and evasion may continue to open new avenues of inquiry and carefully targeted application of adjunctive immunotherapies.

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